New York (N.Y.)

The Trude Kersten Family Collection documents the family history of the Brinizters', who lived in the Altona district of Hamburg, Germany from the late 1920s until 1938. When the situation for Jews in Germany became increasingly threatening they decided to emigrate to India, Great Britain and to the U.S. Jenny Brinitzer worked as a female doctor, Eugen Brinitzer as a dermatologist, their oldest son Carl Brinitzer became famous as an author and correspondent and Ewald Kersten established an international shipping agency. Theír diverse paths of life are illustrated in several photo albums, memoirs, letters and official documents.

The Trudy Jeremias Family Collection documents the lives of several family members of Trudy Jeremias, née Epstein. The largest part of the collection documents the life and art of her mother, Anna de Carmel, who left Vienna in 1938 and opened an arts studio in New York City. There is also material on her stepfathers Walter Gutman and Felix Augenstein. Felix was an architect who became famous for designing Sigmund Freud's chair. Only two clippings pertain to Trudy Jeremias herself.

Collection documents the activities and missions of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America (UOJCA), primarily during the presidencies of William Weiss (1933-1942), Samuel Nirenstein (1942-1948), Moses Feuerstein (1954-1965), and Rabbi Pinchas Stolper’s tenure as Executive Vice President (1976-1994).

Founded in 1898, the UOJCA, also known as the Orthodox Union, serves as the leader, organizer, and voice of affiliated Orthodox Jewish congregations in North America. Divisions of the UOJCA reflected most prominently in the collection include the National Conference of Synagogue Youth, the Women’s Branch, the Kashruth Division, the Department of Synagogue Services, the Israel Center, as well as regional branches.

Subjects addressed in the collection include Sabbath and high holiday observance, dietary laws, Baal Teshuva, slaughterhouse legislation, funeral standards, education, and synagogue management and outreach. Materials include correspondence, minutes, clippings, speeches, UOJCA publications, financial documents, and a few photographs.

United Jewish Appeal-Federation of Jewish Philanthropies of New York is the organization that resulted from the mergers of various New York federations with the New York office of UJA. UJA-Federation and its predecessor organizations have been a central force for communal planning and philanthropy in the New York Jewish community since 1917, and in overseas Jewish communities since 1939. The largest section of this collection covers the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies and its predecessor organizations in Manhattan, the Bronx and Brooklyn. Important subject areas include Federation’s work with their affiliated agencies including detailed budget files through most of the 20th century; UJA’s programs in Israel and campaigns in New York during the 1960s and 1970s; an overview of the UJA-Federation Joint Campaign 1974-1986; and the day to day work of the successfully merged organizations 1986-2000.

This collection contains records of the New York office of the United Restitution Organization (URO). Materials include newsletters, reports, copies of laws concerning restitution, limited correspondence, and a few clippings.

Uriah Phillips Levy rose to the rank of Commodore in the United States Navy despite religious hostility. He succeeded in abolishing corporal punishment in the Navy, and is credited for preserving Thomas Jefferson's estate, Monticello. His papers consist of correspondence, financial and legal records, publications, papers, newspaper articles, a notebook, and a book.

The Victoria (Zetlin) Russman Pordes Collection holds the correspondence, personal, and professional papers of Victoria Pordes, along with other members of her family, especially her sister Anna (Zetlin) Jarosik. Much of the collection consists of correspondence, notably the personal family correspondence between Zetlin siblings. In addition, the collection includes official, and educational papers, postcards, photographs, scrapbooks, tourism materials, immigration and citizenship papers, notebooks, address books, diaries, and other items.

The bulk of the collection consists of documents of the Wald family. Most of them were used to get American visas or citizenship. A body of correspondence is also part of the collection. The focus of these letters concerns emigration / immigration, and the possibility of fleeing Germany.

Records pertaining to the life and business activities of Walter Ornstein, proprietor of beauty salons and purveyor of cosmetics. These include business records and patents pertaining to Goubaud, the perfume business that Max and Elsa Fahrer began in Vienna and that Walter Ornstein reestablished in New York. Also included are photograph albums, song lyrics and letters from a suitor of Gertrude Goldschmidt that date to her life in Vienna prior to emigration and marriage to Walter Ornstein.

The Wassermann Family Collection contains information on the entire Wassermann family. Prominent topics include the family history and life and death of individual family members. The collection consist of birth certificates, death certificates, and books of condolence, identification papers, academic documentations, emigration papers, photographs, family history documents, memoirs, and a family tree.

The Center for Jewish History has, in close collaboration with Internet Archive, captured the websites, content, and peripheral web-based applications of websites chosen by the Center for Jewish History and its five partner organizations to better fulfill their collecting missions.

The collection includes photocopied and original official documents, correspondence, genealogy and photographs of the Goldman and Weil families, as well as some materials pertaining to the Schaap family.

As a young man in Gaukönigshofen, Germany, Werner Kleeman was imprisoned during Kristallnacht, sent to Dachau, and released a few months later. He immigrated to the United States and later took part in D-Day as a U.S. soldier. This collection contains correspondence, official documents, notes, and clippings regarding Werner Kleeman's military service, restitution claims, and pension claims, as well as drafts of his book From Dachau to D-Day. Papers from the military service, immigration, and restitution claims of his father Louis Kleeman comprise a substantial portion of this collection. Also included are genealogical tables, typescripts, and clippings focused mainly on the Kleeman, Loeb, and Lehman families. The final series consists of personal papers of Norborne P. Gatling, Jr., a U.S. soldier whom Kleeman knew.

This collection contains the personal papers of physician and Jewish heredity researcher William Nussbaum, his wife Lotte née Frankfurther, their son Michael, and Lotte’s mother Toni Frankfurther. William immigrated to the United States in 1935, and Lotte and their sons joined him a year later to settle in Kew Gardens (New York, N.Y.). Materials include a large amount of personal correspondence, family trees, photographs, restitution materials, education records, scrapbooks, William Nussbaum’s creative writing, a friendship album, a cookbook, a small number of William Nussbaum’s professional certificates and publications, and materials related to research conducted on William Nussbaum.

Rabbi William F. Rosenblum was head rabbi of the reform congregation at Temple Israel in New York City, 1930-1963. He was also an active leader in a number of Jewish social welfare and religious organizations. In addition to broadly documenting his rabbinical career and organizational activities, the William F. Rosenblum Papers reflect Rosenblum's interests in military chaplaincy, relations between Catholicism and Judaism, the media, race relations, post-WWII Europe, and the Vietnam War. Materials include correspondence, scrapbooks, sermons, speeches, notes, radio transcripts, clippings, photographs, audiotapes, and film.

The William Werner Bloch Collection documents chapters in the life of William Werner Bloch, especially his involvement as an American soldier in World War II, as well as the history of his family and the claim for compensation against Germany after World War II.

The collection holds the documents and correspondence of the Wimpfheimer family from Karlsruhe. The collection covers the Wimpfheimers’ emigration to Switzerland and later the United States as well as their restitution efforts regarding the family’s malting factory in Karlsruhe.

This collection primarily contains the correspondence of the Winn and Taussig families of Czechoslovakia and the United States.

The Wladimir G. Eliasberg Collection documents the lives of the members of the Eliasberg family and to a lesser extent professional activities of Wladimir Eliasberg. The collection consists of personal correspondence, writings, vital and professional documents, and printed materials.

The Wolf-Oppenheimer Collection provides details on the lives, both personal and professional of more than three generations of members of the related Wolf and Oppenheimer families. Most prominently represented among the collection's papers are Hermann and Irene (née Oppenheimer) Wolf and their daughter Marlies (née Wolf) and Eugene Plotnik, but the papers relate to many other family members as well. The collection includes personal papers, official and educational documents, family correspondence, photographs, family trees, articles as well as personal family writing, and newspaper clippings.

The collection holds two autobiographical writings by the artist Elisabeth Model. One work centers on her husband’s persecution by the Nazis in Amsterdam, their narrow escape with their sons Wolfe and Peter, and her sister Mali to New York, and their life in the United States. Her second work focuses on her life in relation to various places and people that impressed her. Also included are family photo albums, some correspondence, and other documents that constitute addenda to the original Elisabeth Model Collection, AR 6306.

The collection holds the personal documents of both the Wulkan and Berger families from Vienna. While most of the documents cover the time of emigration to the United States and Kenya, the collection also holds documents on the family’s life in Vienna before World War II. Much of the correspondence was written during the 1910s, 1920s, and early 1930s.

Record Group 1.1, the primary collection of records from the period when YIVO was headquartered in Vilna, reflects the wide range of activities YIVO engaged in from 1925-1941. Founded as an institute for the study of Yiddish speaking Jewry, YIVO grew to become a research institute, library, archive, and graduate program in one. The collection consists primarily of administrative material such as correspondence, financial records, minutes, reports, lists, and newspaper clippings, as well as essays and publications of the Aspirantur, Division of Youth Research, and the Economic-Statistical, Psychological-Pedagogical, and Philological sections. It incorporates material generated by the Vilna office, satellite offices in Berlin, Warsaw, and New York, and by supporters and collectors throughout Poland, Europe, and indeed the world.

The collection consists of a copy of the constitution of the Council of Young Israel and Young Israel Synagogue Organizations (undated), photocopies of minutes of the movement (1913-1917), circulars and newsletters of Young Israel of Brooklyn (1933-1934), Souvenir journals from annual conventions (1918, 1930-32, 1934, 1937), annual reports of the national council (1930-1931, 1950), a program from the first annual conference of the New England Council of Young Israel (1935), programs of annual dances of Young Israel of Greater Boston (1926-1947), the first three volumes of the movement's Collegiate culture series as well as other miscellaneous documents and publications issued by the organization both in American and Israel.

The material in this record group was culled from Hadassah's Central Files in Israel in the early 1980s to document Hadassah's role in Zionist history. Originally formed from a Zionist women's study group, the first Hadassah chapter in New York had a strong relationship with the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA; then known as the Federation of American Zionists). The material in this record group documents Hadassah's relationship to the ZOA and to other Zionist organizations in the United States, Europe, and Palestine/Israel, particularly in the years leading up to Israeli statehood in 1948. Other subjects addressed in this record group include the founding of Hadassah; World War II, particularly relating to Jewish emigration and refugees; the founding of the United Nations and the debate over recognition of a Jewish state; the partition of Palestine; and Arab-Jewish relations. Included are articles, clippings, convention resolutions, correspondence, diary extracts, memorandums, minutes, press releases, printed ephemera, publications, reports, and speeches.