Correspondence

The Thea Hoffman Engelberg Collection is composed of the documents of Thea Hoffman Engelberg and her relatives. Most of the papers are related to the wedding of Bernhard and Ernestine Schön (Engelberg's grandparents) and her mother Leanora's death. The collection also contains many photos of the family, dating back to the mid-nineteenth century.

This is a constructed collection that contains traces of life in Theresienstadt as well as remembrances of it created after World War II. Materials include correspondence, official decrees and notices, money, poems, a map, military reports, lists of prisoners, clippings, accounts of personal experiences, and materials related to a reproduction of the Theresienstadt children's opera Brundibar.

This collection contains correspondence, photographs, a genealogical table, a cookbook, and a handmade children's picture book pertaining to the family of Josie Rudolph Thurnauer, a German Jew born in 19th century Alaska.

Contains the surviving papers of Rabbi Tobias Geffen who served as a rabbi in New York City (1904-1907), Canton, Ohio (1907-1910), and Atlanta, Georgia (1910-1970). Includes extensive correspondence with members of his family, autobiographies in Yiddish and English (several versions) and other material relating to his personal life.

This collection contains the personal papers of physician Heinrich Toczek (1898-1978), the social worker Hanna-Herta Toczek née Lewin (1900-1977), and their son Peter, reflecting their life in Berlin, Germany and their immigration to the U.S. in 1938. Materials include vital records, military records from World War I, education records, official correspondence, emigration papers, and personal correspondence with relatives who stayed behind in Germany and others who fled to Shanghai.

The bulk of this collection consists of typescripts, research articles and notes as well as newspaper articles which the researcher and historian Toni Oelsner wrote on the subject of Jews in medieval Germany. Her research deals with anti-Judaic and anti-Semitic stereotypes, as they appeared in the Christian culture of southern Germany. In particular Oelsner analyzed economic processes and their impact on and creating of anti-Semitic harassment and persecution against Jewish communities in southern Germany. Research works that drew public attention relate to anti-Judaic violent persecutions in Endingen in the 1460s.

The collection contains correspondence, personal, and business papers of the following members of the Touro family: Abraham (1777/78-1822), Judah (1775-1854), and Rebecca (1779-1833) Touro of Newport, Rhode Island. Documents include an insurance policy, correspondence, and wills.

This collection is comprised of photographs, one bank book, pamphlets, clippings and personal correspondence regarding the organization, Trees for Vietnam (later named Trees and Life for Vietnam). Trees and Life for Vietnam’s goals came out of the Jewish Campaign for the People’s Peace Treaty, which sought to establish a treaty of peace between the United States and North Vietnam from the late 1960s to the early 1970s.

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 and Max Houser Family Collection comprises material mostly on Max Houser and his brother Ernst Ichenhaeuser. The most prominent topic is Ernst’s planned immigration to the US. Also included are typed and translated copies of letters, sent by Max and Trude Houser’s parents in Germany, 1941. The material includes official documents of Max Houser, correspondence, a timeline, a newspaper article written by Max, and a drawing portraying his father.

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.

This collection contains official documents, family papers, and correspondence pertaining to the Jewish community in and around Nuremberg, with an especial focus on the Tuchmann family genealogy. There are also a number of family papers and some correspondece, including materials related to the family's restitution claims.

The collection contains primarily correspondence (Series I) by members of the Ullmann family.

This collection consists of correspondence, including letters from Carl Zuckmayer, Andreas Latzko, Ernst Haeckel, and Maximilian Harden. The remaining materials include various family papers, photographs, a couple of short manuscripts, and family trees.

This collection contains writings by novelist Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz (1915–1942) as well as a few personal materials and documents about his estate and legacy.

The collection contains the records of the Union of Councils for Soviet Jews (UCSJ), an umbrella institution for approximately 50 grassroots organizations active in the movement to free Soviet Jews. The records documenting the UCSJ's operations, programs, and campaigns relate primarily to the 1980's, when the rescue movement reached its pinnacle of success and international attention, and to the 1990's, reflecting UCSJ's work on behalf of human rights after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The records include materials of UCSJ individual councils; materials by the Soviet Jewry Legal Advocacy Center, an affiliate of UCSJ; and a large volume of case files of Prisoners of Conscience, Refuseniks, and Soviet Jews who were allowed to emigrate to the West.

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.

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.

The collection reflects the involvement in the American Soviet Jewry movement of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism (USCJ), the primary organization of synagogues practicing Conservative Judaism in North America. The materials include pamphlets, newsletters, reports, play scripts, poetry, correspondence and photographs.

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.

This collection reflects the experiences of Ursula Elgart née Meseritz (1919-2003) from her youth in Hamburg and Berlin through her immigration in 1938 until eventually settling in California. Personal papers and photographs of some of her family members are also included. Materials include photographs, photo albums, family trees, correspondence, vital records, materials from a Stolperstein ceremony for her parents, a diary, an address book, a datebook, and a cookbook.

The collection represents Uwe Westphal’s research material for his book about the heydays and ultimate destruction of Berlin’s clothing and fashion industry, 1836-1939: ‘Berliner Konfektion und Mode : die Zerstoerung einer Tradition’.

The Vera Margot Kowalski Soliman Family Collection contains correspondence on Vera Margot Kowalski Soliman's legal and financial matters.

This collection documents the lives of Vera Meyer's family members, especially her parents, Alfred and Eva Meyer, but also involving her grandparents and uncles. Prominent in the collection are the many family photographs and copies of family correspondence, including immigration and wartime letters. Other material consists of some biographical essays and a family tree.

Documents pertaining to Irgun Olei Leipzig (Verband Ehemaliger Leipziger – Association of Leipzig Immigrants) in Israel.

This collection documents the work of the concentration camp survivor Viktor Kupfer (later Victor Cooper) as a business custodian, special investigator, and Jewish community leader in Straubing (Bavaria, Germany) from 1945-1949. The collection relates primarily to the denazification process and early restitution cases in Straubing as well as the rebuilding of Straubing’s Jewish community. Materials included consist of correspondence, legal statements, affidavits, court decisions, reports, Viktor Kupfer’s personal identification documents, and a few copies of photographs and memorial programs. Several documents contain anonymous threats.

Vital documents and educational and military papers; correspondence; articles, interviews, lectures, and stories by Victor Polzer.

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 collection is of a fragmentary nature, and consists of miscellaneous materials that pertain to the role and activities of the Vilna Chief of Police in the everyday life of the city and province of Vilna, and to the relationship between the Vilna Chief of Police and other police, military and civil organs in the Vilna province. Most of the documents in this collection, which covers the tsarist period from the 1830s to 1918, were assembled during the latter part of the nineteenth and early part of the twentieth century

The Vilna Collection represents fragmentary materials that were part of the original YIVO Archives in Vilna before WWII. The collection includes a wide array of materials dealing with a great variety of aspects of Jewish life in the Pre-revolutionary Russian Empire and post-revolutionary Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, and Soviet Russia. The Collection consists of personal correspondence, official correspondence with organizations and governmental institutions, financial and statistical reports, minutes of meetings of Jewish communal and political organizations, bibliographic materials, including card catalogues and bibliographies. Also included here are vital documents, such as birth certificates and birth registers, affidavits, certificates, diplomas, and travel documents. Additionally, there are petitions, resolutions, appeals, printed materials, manuscripts, lists, and questionnaires. There is a wealth of materials dealing with Jewish book trade and publishing, youth and sports organizations, education, Jewish communal life, and political activities.