Latvia

This collection contains the records of Ira H. Jolles’ activities with the Cahnman Foundation, a philanthropic organization which funded projects dedicated to the preservation and care of Jewish archives, architecture, and culture. It consists primarily of correspondence relating to funded projects, including their planning and scope. Also included are several years worth of Board of Director meeting minutes and select legal documents from the Estate of Gisella Levi Cahnman.

The Clara Michelson Collection documents the life and work of the writer and graphologist Clara Michelson. The main subjects of the collection are her writings and her publications. The collection consists of manuscripts, a list of manuscripts, correspondence, publications and a photograph.

This collection documents the life of Isaac Zelig Zieman (1920-2007). Born into an Orthodox family in Riga, Zieman managed to escape Latvia in 1941 and spent much of the war in the Soviet Union. In Germany from 1945-1956, he worked with displaced persons and studied psychology, after which he emigrated to the United States. In New York City, he dedicated the remainder of his life to facilitating dialogue between groups with historical enmities. The bulk of the material relates to this work, from the 1970s-2000s, as a lecturer and group therapist focused on peace and understanding between groups such as Germans and Americans, blacks and whites, and Israelis and Palestinians. The collection also includes materials from Zieman's immediate post-war experience in Germany working with displaced persons and as a student in Munich.

The Laura Rubin Family papers are comprised of four generations of family photographs and certificates of marriage, birth, and death for members of the Rubin-Simpson family of Brooklyn, New York and the Simpson-Bernstein family of Schenectady, New York.

This collection consists of photographs and negatives of World ORT conferences and congresses, various individuals connected with ORT, and ORT vocational programs and activities, including in Displaced Person’s camps, in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Cuba, and North and South America.

Established in 1912 in St. Petersburg by a group of Jewish doctors, lawyers and prominent public figures, OZE sought to create an all-Russian Jewish welfare system with the goal of promoting the study and knowledge of medical and sanitary practices, detecting and curing diseases among Jews, preventing epidemics, and creating living conditions conducive to the normal physical and mental development of Jewish children. TOZ, established in Poland in 1921, remained closely associated with OZE and shared the same program of activities. Because of World War I and its disarraying consequences, especially in the eastern regions of the Polish state, TOZ concentrated its relief efforts primarily on battling contagious diseases and epidemics caused by poverty, malnourishment and the deplorable sanitary conditions of the Jewish population. The collection is of mixed provenance and fragmentary nature, and consists of miscellaneous materials that relate to the activities of OZE and TOZ in Eastern Europe, and to some extent, in Western Europe.