Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) -- Personal narratives

The Adolf Loebel Collection primarily documents the events of the Holocaust in Baden-Württemberg with an extensive amount of newspaper clippings. To a smaller extent it shows a few of the experiences of Adolf Loebel, head of the Jewish community in Heidelberg. In addition to the many newspaper clippings the collection contains circular letters and announcements, some correspondence, a list of Jews in Baden from 1940 and a few photographs.

The collection includes the correspondence 1937-1946 between members of the Westheim family, who lived in Amsterdam, and their two sons, Alfred and Benno Bodo Westheim, who lived in New York City.

The bulk of the materials in this collection are drafts of articles by psychologist Dorit Whiteman on the experience of Holocaust survivors, including a full draft of the longer work The Uprooted. Additional materials include some photocopies of personal papers belonging to her mother, Lillian Stern Bader.

Folder 1 contains the Questionnaire of the Austrian Heritage Collection at the Leo Baeck Institute and additional biographical documents. Vital documents include birth certificates, residency permits, military documents, and other related documents stemming from the war years in Cernauti / Czernowitz. There are also documents relating to his attempts to emigrate from Romania, an honorary diploma, correspondence relating to emigration and exhibitions, his parents' death certificates and other post-World War II Romanian and American identification documents.

This collection documents the history of the Weiss family with a focus on Gerald Weiss’ parents Jacob and Selma Weiss née Falk and their siblings. Jacob (alternatively Köbes) Weiss (1883-1965) was born the second of nine children to the cattle dealer Albert Weiss and his wife Mathilde Amalie née Michel. As a young man, he lived in Cologne and started a bed linen manufacturing business, S & J Weiss, with his brother Siegmund. As the situation for Jews in Germany worsened in the 1930s, he and Siegmund smuggled money from the business to banks in Holland to aid in the Weiss family’s emigration. Jacob Weiss emigrated with his wife and children in 1939 and settled in New York. This collection contains family trees, family correspondence, translations of family correspondence, vital records, immigration and naturalization records, correspondence and legal documents concerning restitution claims, correspondence and legal documents concerning the estate of Hermann and Carolina Michel née Frank, and correspondence and photographs concerning family gravesites and the restoration of a Jewish cemetery.

This collection contains a substantial amount of correspondence written by Heinrich and Toni Busse while in hiding in Berlin 1939-1945, as well as manuscript drafts of Heinrich Busse's anti-war writings, some of his personal papers and official documents.

This collection mostly contains Friedmann family correspondence, collected by Herbert Freeman (1925-). The letters cover the period 1904-1951, written by Jews from Germany either in Germany or after their emigration to either Palestine/Israel or to the United States. It also contains photocopies from the National Archives related to Herbert and Henry Friedman's migration to the United States and family trees of the Friedmann family.

Three essays by Ingrid Decker are bound together into one illustrated typescript. They all report about Jewish German survivors of the Holocaust and their emigrations to Mexico and to the Dominican Republic.

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 collection comprises various official documents and correspondence of Julius and Bertha Hirsch née Fenster during the interwar-period and years of World War II.

This collection documents the survival of Alfred, Meta, Marlyse and Theo Levy during the Nazi regime in the Saar, Luxembourg and France. Amongst others it encompasses the voluminous correspondence between the Levy and the Scherman families during World War II and their restitution papers. The register of surviving members of the Jewish community in Saarbrücken after 1945 is one of the remarkable documents in this collection.

Manuscripts and accompanying materials relating to the fate of Gustav Bier and his wife Ellen Bier-Feitler, who was of Jewish descent, under the Nazi regime. Accompanying materials include photocopied official records, photographs, etc.

Two original German manuscripts and their English translations, describing the author’s escape from Nazi Germany (written in 1942) and her subsequent life underground (written in the 1960s).

This collection contains the papers of Susanne (Susi) Friedmann-Kirsch (1926-), documenting her family’s history in Austria, Eastern Europe, and Israel, from the mid 1800s to the 2000s. The collection mostly holds vital documents and genealogical materials, including family trees, photographs, correspondence, family narratives, diaries, and other writings.

E-copies of vital records, photographs and clippings pertaining to Vera Gutmann. Also included are gloves.