Convicted of passing atomic secrets to the Soviet Union, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed 70 years ago on June 19, 1953, the first and only American civilians to face the death penalty for espionage. At the time, many believed the Rosenbergs to be innocent victims of antisemitism and Cold War hysteria, or at the very least that they had received an overly harsh…
American Presidents Between the Two World Warsby J.D. Arden, M.L.I.S. candidate, Reference Services Research Intern, Center for Jewish History On this Presidents’ Day, in the wake of one of the most heated political campaigns of recent memory, it is interesting to look back at how the interests of American Jews figured into the presidential scene of three presidents—Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge and Herbert…
Out of the Archives: “File Problems” in Tunis (1983)by Kevin Schlottmann, Levy Processing Archivist, Center for Jewish History This letter from the Tunis office of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC, or “the Joint”) is in response to a records management survey questionnaire. It describes the “file problems” encountered by the office staff there: A swift kick, a few choice words in Arabic,…
