Litzmannstadt-Getto (Łódź, Poland)

This clippings collection contains newspaper clippings covering history and memorials of concentration camps. Also included are brochures, programs, and a poster for events held in memory of victims of concentration camps. Finally, two annual reports of the KZ-Gedenkstätte Dachau and a bibliography of literature at the KZ-Museum Dachau are included.

This constructed collection contains very limited traces of several concentration camps established and run by the Nazis between 1933 and 1945. The concentration camps covered are Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Buna-Monowitz, Dachau, Sachsenhausen, Schatzlar, and Stutthof. Limited materials from the Łódź ghetto are also included, and other concentration camps may be mentioned. The scant materials in the collection include correspondence, creative or religious writings, photographs, money, lists of prisoners, materials on Josef Mengele, calls to action to assist prisoners, military reports by liberators, a copy of a Totenbuch from Dachau, an original death certificate from Auschwitz, and an original certificate of discharge from Sachsenhausen. The one exception to the relative scarcity of materials on each camp is the extensive interrogation report from Buchenwald.

The collection documents life inside the Lódz Jewish ghetto during the Nazi occupation of Poland. It consists predominantly of the records of the Eldest of the Jews in the Lódz ghetto, Chaim Mordechai Rumkowski, and of his administration. Included are original correspondence, announcements, circulars, charts, publications, reports, essays, albums and photographs.

This collection contains the papers of Julian Hirszhaut, a Yiddish journalist and author of several works about the Holocaust in Poland. He collected a great number of historical documents on this topic, including hundreds of eyewitness accounts, which make up an important part of this collection. The materials in this collection relate to Hirszhaut’s important work gathering documents and testimonies of the Holocaust, as well as to his other professional activities as a journalist.

The collection contains the papers of Nachman Blumental (1902-1983), a Polish-Jewish historian, scholar, and philologist, who after surviving the Holocaust in a non-German occupied part of the Soviet Union travelled around Poland collecting documents and materials related to ghettos, camps, sites of mass murder, and Holocaust survivors. These materials include, among others, survivor testimonies, witness accounts, original Nazi administrative documents, songs, poems, jokes, parodies, folklore, and children’s schoolwork written during the war, oftentimes in camps and ghettos, as well as Blumental’s extensive notes on Nazi terminology and distinct terminology used by Jews in camps and ghettos. The collection consists of correspondence, published and unpublished articles by Nachman Blumental and other individuals, newspaper clippings, research notes, Nazi documents, and dictionary and bibliography note cards.

The collection contains various ephemera pertaining to the 20th century history of Jews in Germany and German Jews in Israel, including stamps, letters and postcards, cirulars and leaflets, and membership cards.

Over 270 items include: voluntary Jewish organization monthly dues stamps and seals; synagogue and Kosher labels; Berlin Community Council membership booklets; Jewish sport club certificates; multilingual stamps of the Harand Movement ‘against race hatred and human misery’ (including an autographed postcard photo of founder Julie Harand); and a notable collection of Jewish Veterans Relief Stamps of World War l (RJF). Jewish merchants and banks are also represented in colorful advertising labels and seals. Also included are several Nazi anti-Semitic items and post-World War II depictions of restored synagogues destroyed by Nazis.