by Sarah Ponichtera, Processing Archivist, Center for Jewish History
The landsmanshaftn collections of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research here at the Center illuminate the complex role of philanthropy in immigrant Jewish culture. Although the majority of the records concern apparently mundane affairs of collecting dues and reserving graves, buying Israel bonds and making dinner reservations for meetings, their constitutions reveal a wide array…
Out of the Archives: Franz Werfel Family Correspondence
by Kevin Schlottmann, Levy Processing Archivist, Center for Jewish History
Above: Telegram from Marianne Rieser to mother Albine Werfel regarding meeting with Varian Fry. January 14, 1941.
The Leo Baeck Institute, as part of its DigiBaeck project, has digitized the Franz Werfel Family Correspondence (AR 6225). This small collection documents the 1940…
by Alyssa Carver, Project Archivist, Center for Jewish History
The Leo Baeck Institute’s newly processed Florence Mendheim Collection of Anti-Semitic Propaganda (AR 25441) contains a variety of American-made, pro-Nazi material from the 1930s, and even among such unpleasant company this publication stands out. On the cover of each issue of the National American Bulletin stands this figure: a muscular, loincloth-clad Native American…
Out of the Archives: Birthday Card for a “Wanderer”
by Kevin Schlottmann, Levy Processing Archivist, Center for Jewish History
This birthday card, found in the Leo Baeck Institute’s Margaret Rothenberger Family Collection (AR 25465), is part of a scrapbook documenting the Rothenberger family’s two years in France, 1933-1935, after they fled Germany and before they immigrated to the United States.
It…