Articles

The collection includes memoirs, poems, notes, correspondence, photographs and clippings pertaining to Miriam Merzbacher-Blumenthal, to her husband Peter and to her mother Ilse Blumenthal-Weiss.'Materials concentrate on the 1940s, when Miriam Merzbacher-Blumenthal and her mother Ilse Blumenthal-Weiss lived in Amsterdam and New York, as well as on correspondence from the 1950s and 1960s.

The Morawetz-Glaser Family Collection documents these two Czech families, and in particular the notable events in the lives of the industrialist and philanthropist Richard Morawetz and his wife Frida (née Glaser) and of their children. The collection includes extensive family correspondence; family writings including diaries, memoirs, and poems; photographs and photo albums; family trees and genealogical research correspondence; newspaper clippings and articles; and official documents and other papers.

This collection contains the papers of Morris "Moe" Berg, who was a professional baseball player, linguist, lawyer, and international spy during WWII. Berg's papers are in the form of correspondence, contracts, telegrams, newspaper and magazine clippings.

The collection contains papers of one of the pioneers of the American Soviet Jewry Movement. Starting in the early 1960s Moshe Decter instigated broad publicity campaigns to raise global awareness about the persecution of Soviet Jews and authored hundreds of articles on the subject in a variety of publications. Mr. Decter established and directed the Jewish Minorities Research bureau, served as the executive secretary of the Conference on the Status of Soviet Jews and as a director of research at the American Jewish Congress. Moshe Decter Papers consist of materials dating from the late 1950s to the early 2000s, with the bulk of the collection dating in 1960s-1970s. The documents include articles, correspondence, transcripts, notes, memoranda, publications, news clippings, broadsides and photographs.

The Mühlfelder and Roeckert Families Collection contains both primary sources and research materials that, together, combine to record the history of these families. Charles C. Milford (born Klaus Mühlfelder) compiled the research materials; the greatest quantity of correspondence, documents, and photographs in the collection also pertains to his life. Documents include vital documents, educational records, military service records, and materials relating to Charles C. Milford’s career as a librarian. In addition to Milford, his father Simon Mühlfelder and wife Patricia E. Milford feature most prominently in the first three series of the collection. Family history research focuses on Simon Mühlfelder’s first wife Martha Kassel and people within her milieu. This research is compiled from Milford’s correspondence with scholars and archives, relevant archival finding aids and photocopies of documents held by various archives, articles, photocopies from books, catalog records for pertinent books, and Wikipedia pages and other printouts of biographical information from the Internet. These same types of material also make up Milford’s research on topics of interest, including the history of Jews in Germany broadly and of the Mühlfelder family specifically.

Papers of Murray Levine, a rabbi at Temple Beth Sholom in Framingham, MA, worked extensively to help resettle Jewish immigrants arriving from the former Soviet Union and traveled to the Soviet Union to deliver spiritual and material support to Soviet Jewish Refuseniks. The materials include photographs and slides, trip reports, notes, memos, clippings, Refusenik profiles, a notebook with coded names of Soviet Jews, and correspondence, including a letter of support from Senator Edward M. Kennedy.

The Nadelmann and Wolff Families Collection provides documentation about members of the Nadelmann, Wolff, Lewinsohn, and Kann families, including details on their professions, early lives, the towns from which family members derived, and including details on the emigration and deportation of family members. The collection consists of family correspondence, photographs, genealogical research, and research on family members' hometowns.

Contains correspondence, judicial opinions, addresses and speeches, newspaper clippings, and published material relating to Perlman's career as a judge in various municipal courts of the city of New York (1935-1952), his political career as a New York State Assemblyman (1915-1917), member of the United States House of Representatives (1920-1927), and as an unsuccessful candidate for New York State office.

It also contains published material relating to Perlman's activities on behalf of the Jewish community, especially the American Jewish Congress (1942-1946), where he served as chairman of its National Executive Committee.

Approximately half of this collection consists of the official minutes; memoranda; administrative and investigatory reports; and correspondence of the Mayor's Committee on Unity established by Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia in 1944, of which Perlman served as a member on the subcommittees on Housing, City Services, and the Timone Investigation.

The collection documents the National Jewish Welfare Board's (JWB) evolution from an organization founded in 1917 to provide support for soldiers in times of war to an agency involved in all aspects of Jewish life both in the United States and abroad. In 1990 JWB recreated itself as the Jewish Community Centers Association of North America.

The New York Board of Rabbis is a cross-denominational Jewish organization for rabbis that seeks to foster fellowship, provide educational enrichment, and rise above theological differences to strengthen and defend the Jewish community advancing its’ educational, religious, and social values. The collection documents the governance of the Board and its activities in serving the Jewish community of New York and at large.

The Norman A. Sugarman papers consist of both library-bound volumes and unbound manuscripts of addresses, essays, outlines, and published articles written by Sugarman during his career as a tax attorney, an Assistant Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, and general champion for charitable organizations.

Starting in June 1922, journalist Norman Hapgood wrote a number of articles exposing the anti-Semitic propaganda of Henry Ford. These articles were later compiled by Brandeis student Daniel E. Miranda, who realized the scarcity of the articles. This collection contains those articles and a forward describing them.

This collection contains material relating to Norman Salit's activities with various organizations, including the Synagogue Council of America, the Rabbinical Assembly of America, the Wartime Emergency Commission for Conservative Judaism, the Boy Scouts of America, the Jewish Education Committee, the American Child Guidance Foundation, Religion in American Life, the Valley Forge Foundation, the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, and the National Community Relations Advisory Council. There are also speeches, writings, sermons, items related to Sharit's legal work and Zionist activities, as well as some letters from Mordecai Kaplan.

The Oscar H. Netter Family Collection contains detailed genealogies and a history of the Netter (alternately spelled Neter or Noether) family with supporting papers, including clippings, articles and family and business documents.

University professor, historian, and scholar Oscar I. Janowsky sought to understand Jewish culture and human rights in light of modern anti-Semitism, imperialism, and pluralistic states. Throughout his robust career he was a professor of history at the City College of New York, he also served as an advisor to League of Nations High Commissioner James G. McDonald, directed and authored major studies in the fields of Jewish community centers and education. The papers in this collection include his correspondence with colleagues and friends, research notes and article drafts, and his unpublished memoirs.

Rabbi Oscar M Lifshutz (1916-1990), served as Army Chaplain during World War II and Korea. This collection contains photocopies documenting his life.

The collection documents portions of the life of the art dealer and publisher Otto Kallir (originally Otto Nirenstein). It contains papers on his military career from 1914 to 1918 as well as an extensive volume of his war diaries. Enclosed are also the memoirs of various family members documenting family history. Finally there is a small amount of correspondence from Otto Kallir and family members.

Genia Silkes, a teacher in pre-war Poland, dedicated her postwar career to the history of the Holocaust. The testimonies of Polish Holocaust survivors, of which there are 64 from children and 9 from adults, have great historical value. Also included are her research notes, records of her speaking engagements, and personal letters and photographs.

This collection contains articles by Michal Weichert, parts of his memoir, and testimonies submitted on his behalf during his trials following WWII. The articles and manuscripts of his memoir illustrate aspects of his life before WWII, where he was an active and important director in the Yiddish theater in Poland. The testimonies and court materials shed light on his struggles to clear himself from charges that he collaborated with the Nazi authorities during the Holocaust in the course of his work distributing aid to Jewish refugees.

This collection contains the papers of Tashrak, the American Yiddish humorist and journalist. It consists primarily of clippings of Tashrak’s columns and about Tashrak, but also contains correspondence, including his correspondence with Sholem Aleichem, and manuscripts created when he adapted his works for performance.

This collection holds the correspondence and papers of the professor Paul Proskauer, his brother Henry (Hans) Proskauer, and to a lesser extent, his parents. Although personal correspondence comprises the bulk of the collection, an additional focus is his and his brother's professional reviews and articles. Further materials include official documents, photo and postcard albums, programs, a diary and newspaper and magazine clippings.

The Perlmann Family Collection consists of papers of members of the Perlmann and related families, including the Spiero and Jolowicz families. It includes genealogy and biographies of these families and also of members of the related Lewald and Simson families. Some material on the city of Königsberg is also present. The collection consists of correspondence, genealogical research, family trees, biographies, articles, newspaper clippings, official documents, a few postcards and photographs, a memorial book and a few pamphlets.

This record group contains personal papers and special collections documenting individuals, both Hadassah members and non-Hadassah members, who were important to Hadassah. Much of the material forming the collections in this record group came from the administrative files of the national office of Hadassah, though some of the material was donated to Hadassah. Key individuals represented within this record group include Hadassah national board members Anna Tulin Elyachar, Bertha S. Schoolman, and Denise Tourover Ezekiel, as well as Jesse Zel Lurie who served as the first professional editor of Hadassah Magazine (originally Hadassah Newsletter) from 1947 to 1980.

The papers of Jewish civic leader Philip Bernstein contain writings and professional papers related to his career with the Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds, including his participation in the establishment of the National Foundation for Jewish Culture and the National Jewish Community Relations Council, and his work with many other Jewish communal organizations, including the Jewish Agency for Israel, the Joint Distribution Committee, the United Jewish Appeal, and the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies of New York.

The collection documents Rabbi Philip Goodman’s involvement with the American Jewish Historical Society, the early years of the Orthodox Union, the Institutional Synagogue in Harlem and its day camp, the Army and Navy commission of the Jewish Welfare Board during World War II, a fraternal club originating in the Uptown Talmud Torah, The Jewish Book Council of America, The Townsend Harris High School and its Hatikvah Society, Yeshiva University, Jewish scouting, and more. The collection contains addresses, articles, bulletins, correspondence, commencement book, guest book, newsclippings, newsletters, photographs, radio broadcast transcripts, souvenir journal, and yearbook.

Contains the 1969, and 1971-1973 issues of The South End, the Wayne State University student paper. Also includes: correspondence, public statements, petitions, and a tape-recording relating to controversies generated by the printing of alleged anti-Zionist/anti-Semitic articles in the newspaper. The correspondence consists for the most part of an exchange of letters between university officials, Jewish community leaders and Leonard N. Simons, a Detroit advertising executive, during the 1969 controversy; and correspondence with Philip Slomovitz, editor of the Detroit Jewish news, in 1972-73. The tape recording is of a February 2, 1969 interview with John Watson, editor of the South End.

The Rahn Family Collection centers on the lives of Alfred and Lilli (née Bechmann) Rahn, but also contains many documents of their parents, siblings, and even more distant family members. It also documents the family members' attempts to receive restitution for their losses. The collection includes a large amount of correspondence, official, personal, and legal documents, photographs and photo albums, financial documentation, manuscripts and fragments of creative and academic writing, family trees and genealogical notes, newspaper clippings, poetry, educational certificates and diplomas, texts of lectures, teaching materials, a few recipes, and other papers.

This collection contains correspondence, official documents, photographs, and other archival materials pertaining to Ralph Moratz (1931-2016) and to his project to locate fellow survivors of his Kindertransport from Berlin to France in 1939. After arriving in France, Moratz and thirty-nine other boys sought refuge in the Chateau de Quincy, a Jewish Orphanage near Paris. In 1941, Moratz was able to escape occupied France with assistance from the Children's Aid Society OSE and resettle in New York.

Raphael Lemkin, an international lawyer, initiated the use of the term "genocide," and succeeded in persuading the United Nations to adopt the Genocide Convention in 1948. Documents include personal correspondence and artifacts; correspondence, documentation, clippings, and articles regarding the United Nations adoption of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment on the Crime of Genocide treaty; and source material for the unfinished manuscript, History of Genocide. Collection also includes photographs, identity cards, articles, papers, essays, clippings, magazines, research materials, term papers, posters, United Nations materials, and microfilm.

Founded in 1969, the American Association for Ethiopian Jews (AAEJ) was instrumental in the international effort to promote recognition of the Beta Israel (known among non-Jewish Ethiopians as "Falashas") by Israeli authorities, and to assist Jewish emigration from Ethiopia to Israel. The extensive files of the AAEJ include case work files, research materials and Jewish artifacts collected in Ethiopia by AAEJ workers. In the wake of the successful evacuation of Ethiopian Jewry to Israel in 1993, the AAEJ decided to disband and voted to deposit its records at the American Jewish Historical Society. Included are correspondence, office files, photographs, slides, videotapes, audiocassettes and other materials which pertain to AAEJ's efforts to raise the consciousness of the American Jewish community about this unique Jewish subculture. The organization's papers supplement those of its founder, Graenum Berger, which are also held at the American Jewish Historical Society.