Vital statistics records

The collection comprises a portion of the records of the Jewish community of Krotoszyn, known in German as Krotoschin. The records span the years 1828 to 1919, when the town was part of the Posen (Poznań) region of Prussia and, after 1871, of the German Empire; in 1919, it became part of newly independent Poland. The records are mainly those of the Jewish communal administration, or council, of Krotoschin, along with some records kept by communal voluntary associations, or, in one instance, the teacher of the Jewish elementary school. The collection consists predominantly of correspondence and minutes, with inclusion in some periods of documents such as tax lists and lists of eligible voters; records concerning charitable aid to community members and donations to external causes; and other types of documents, including insurance policies, mortgage records, debt repayment plan, and drawings/plans of property. Highlights include records related to property damage in a town fire of 1827; documentation of income and expenses for the year 1835; records of communal elections, 1834-1872; correspondence concerning marriages, 1838-1841, and requests for death certificates, 1834-1858; a small amount of material pertaining to the religious school, circa 1880s-1902; correspondence with regimental commanders of the German army regarding Jewish soldiers from the Krotoschin area, 1891-1910; applications for the position of rabbi, 1895, and cantor/shochet, 1904-1910; and continuous proceedings of the communal council in the period 1905 to 1913.

The collection comprises a portion of the records of the Jewish community of Ostrów Wielkopolski, today in west-central Poland, in the Greater Poland Voivodeship. The region was annexed by Prussia in 1793, in the Second Partition of Poland; in German the town was known as Ostrowo. The records date mainly from 1834 to 1919, with a few materials from as early as 1822. During this period the town was part of the Posen (Poznań) region of Prussia and, after 1871, of the German Empire; in 1919, it was incorporated into the Second Republic of Poland. The community numbered nearly 2,000 members in the late 19th century and declined steadily thereafter due to migration of members to larger German cities or overseas; only a small Jewish community remained during the interwar period. The records are mainly those of the Jewish communal administration, or council; a small amount of material pertains to several community voluntary organizations. Included are financial records such as budgets, balance sheets, and tax lists; communal minutes and decisions throughout the period; correspondence with the government, and, to a lesser extent, with Jewish organizations and other Jewish communities; records pertaining to community members' naturalizations, marriages, births, and synagogue seat contracts; petitions from individual community members, especially pertaining to charitable aid in the mid to late 19th century; records pertaining to communal educational and religious institutions; records on the hiring and employment of community rabbis,cantors, and other personnel, including application materials from candidates not hired; property records and mortgages; documentation of construction and renovation of communal buildings; records related to court cases, bequests, and estate and guardianship matters; and ephemera such as meeting notices and announcement fliers, as well as scattered clippings.

This collection contains materials about the Reichsvertretung der deutschen Juden, a federation of Jewish organizations and regional and local Jewish communities, founded in 1933, that aimed to provide a unified voice for German Jewry in dealing with the Nazi authorities. It includes a significant amount of correspondence surrounding the formation of the Reichsvertretung, as well as articles, budgets, clippings, ephemera, leaflets, minutes, reports, and statistics.

Materials in this collection document both the private lives and business activities of the Nathan family, owners of shoe manufacturing companies in Frankfurt am Main and Chicago, through correspondence, documents, business records, and photographs. The collection focuses on Richard Nathan, his wife Anna Nathan née David, and their sons Franz Hermann, Erich, and Walter.

This is a collection of addenda to the Robitscher Family Collection (AR 25012) that further document the lives of Thomas Robitscher, his mother Magdalena Robitscher née Hahn, and his wife Anne Kelemen. Materials include personal correspondence, photographs, Thomas Robitscher’s personal papers, vital documents and other legal and official papers related to Thomas Robitscher, an inventory of his mineral collection, and correspondence regarding its donation.

The Rosenfeld Family Collection comprises several generations of official and personal papers of this family of cantors and physicians. Included are a large number of certificates and other official documents from government and military offices, religious authorities, and academic and professional institutions. There are also a few family letters and essays, notes, family trees and genealogical descriptions and various other material.

This collection contains papers of the ancestors of Franz Rosenzweig. Included are vital certificates, marriage and engagement contracts, school papers, military papers, letters, poems, photos, and clippings concerning members of the Rosenzweig, Ehrenberg, and Eisenberg families. There is also correspondence of Adam Rosenzweig, including letters from Samuel Meyer Ehrenberg and Leopold Zunz.

This collection contains the personal and professional papers of Shad Polier, including legal files from cases with which Polier was involved, particularly those concerning adoptions and civil liberties, articles and speeches by Polier, correspondence, and materials from several of the organizations with which Polier was affiliated, including the American Jewish Congress, the World Jewish Congress and the NAACP. These materials reflect his widespread participation with the civil liberties movement, equal rights and anti-discrimination law.

This collection contains records of the Guggenheim family, including family tree, family history, vital records, obituaries, papers of family members who emigrated to Chile, and other papers of family members.

This collection contains Simon Kaufmann's residency permit for Lichtenau, Baden (1819), a few letters sent from Kaufmann family members in mid-19th century Georgia, and a genealogical chronicle of Simon Kaufmann's family.

The Stanton Family Collection contains documents, correspondence, and photographs representing several centuries of Henry Stanton’s German-Jewish ancestors from the Sobernheim, Hinrichsen, Bütow, Bendix, Reiche, Abraham, Goldschmidt, Bleichröder, and Mond families. Family histories by Stanton based upon these materials are also included.

This collection consists of material relating to the Steiner family of Laupheim, Baden-Württemberg. It contains hundreds of letters between Hedwig Steiner and her sons Julius and Heinrich during World War One. It also includes other correspondence, vital, business, and educational documents, and photographs, as well as a few pages of a late 18th or early 19th-century Haggadah in Hebrew and Judeo-German.

This collection documents the Stern and Fantl families of Vienna, Austria from the mid-nineteenth century through 1980. Materials include personal correspondence, vital records (birth and marriage certificates), immigration and naturalization records, education records, passports, legal papers, contracts of sale for family property, photographs, poems, and Erwin Stern’s personal account of imprisonment in Dachau.

Vital documents, letters of protection and municipal citizenship, autograph albums, wills and testaments, marriage contracts, memoirs, obituaries, and clippings concerning members of the Valentin family, the family business, the freight-movers Jacob & Valentin, and related families, including the Abraham, Behrend, Loewen, and Mannheimer families; noteworthy documents include memoirs of the banker Samuel Liepmann Loewen, 1824, and records of the Prussian minter and medalist Jacob Abraham, 1753, as well as photocopies of records of his son, the minter Abraham Abramson.

This collection documents the education and immigration of Herta Fleck née Froehlich (1908-1994) and Walter Fleck (1903-1990). Both born in Mönchengladbach, Germany, Herta and Walter studied medicine and economics, respectively. They married in 1935 and immigrated to the United States, settling in New York. The collection contains vital records, education records, official documents, and restitution materials.