Image: Courtesy of Leo Baeck Institute By James Benjamin Nadel, Communications Outreach Associate As the summer ends, and opportunities to explore the great outdoors grow fewer, I wanted to draw attention to the little discussed history of Jewish hiking organizations. Several of these youth groups existed in pre-World War II Europe, but one stands out in particular for its unique engagement with various cultural…
Science of Judaism (Wissenschaft des Judentums) In 2011 the Center for Jewish History and the Leo Baeck Institute, one of its five partners, embarked on a project with Goethe University Frankfurt am Main to digitize nearly 1,000 books that went missing from the university library’s Judaica collection during the devastation of World War II. The goal of the project was to digitally recreate the Freimann Judaica Collection as it…
by Kevin Schlottmann, Archival Services Manager, Center for Jewish History The Leo Baeck Institute’s Milli Frank correspondence (AR 6686) contains dozens of letters and postcards sent to Milli Frank in Brooklyn, New York, between 1937 and 1944, by her parents, aunts and uncles in Germany. Later, some of these relatives wrote to her from the concentration camps of France. None of them appears to…
Letter from Willy Hellpach to Martha Kubatzki on Reichstag stationery, 1930 Out of the ArchivesAn Epistolary Romanceby Catherine Greer, Archival Processing Fellow, Center for Jewish History I spent two weeks at the Center for Jewish History as a Graduate Archival Processing Fellow. The twelve-day program provided me with a wealth of theoretical knowledge, hands-on experience in archival processing–and an unexpected historical intrigue. On the first…
Out of the ArchivesForesightSubmitted by Kevin Schlottmann, Levy Processing Archivist, Center for Jewish History From the Leo Baeck Institute’s Helen Ollendorff Curth Collection ([AR 25004]). Excerpt from the above June 1933 letter: “I doubt whether I can really give you authentic information on the German-Jewish doctor question. I happen to know, because I have a married sister in Cork, that the Irish Free State…
Out of the ArchivesPrioritiesby Kevin Schlottmann, Levy Processing Archivist, Center for Jewish History The first image above is a letter of reference written for Ernst Fleischmann upon his leaving the position of head chemist for BMW’s airplane engine division. He left voluntarily for the United States in 1935 as conditions for Jews in Germany were worsening. The second image is the United States patent…
Judisches Ceremonial This German book contains illustrated explanations to numerous Jewish rituals spanning from birth to death, including circumcision, presentation of the first born, prayer at the synagogue, a wedding procession, purification of the bride, the washing of the brother-in-law’s feet, the feast of reconciliation, death rites, burials, and celebrations of the Sabbath, Passover, and the New Year. Published in 1716, a copy of…