The NYPL Librarian Who Spied on the Nazis Florence Mendheim was a Jewish librarian for the New York Public Library, and in 1933 she went undercover to spy on Nazi-associated groups in the United States. Her collection, featuring a large amount of antisemitic propaganda, is held by the Leo Baeck Institute, and is an invaluable window into the spread of fascist propaganda in America…
Illuminated Manuscript Presented in Thanks after the HolocaustJuly 1945Tangier, MoroccoVellum, Gouache and Silk Ribbons, Bound in LeatherFrom the Collection of the American Sephardi Federation On display through November 3rd Hungarian Jews stranded in Morocco during World War II created this lavish thank-you note for Lorna Gascoigne (1887-1979), the second wife of Alvary Douglas Frederick Trench-Gascoigne (1893-1970), the wartime British consul-general at Tangiers. Lorna was…
We continue Sarah Ganton’s story of Molly Picon, for decades a household name in Yiddish theater and vaudeville, then a Broadway star and performer with the USO, then a radio personality. We’re very fortunate to have a rich record of her life through the archives of the American Jewish Historic Society, one of the five partners of the Center of Jewish History. Join us in…
Row of Jewish-owned stores near Great Synagogue, Lumobl, Poland (now Ukraine), 1925. (Collection of Photographs and Measurement Drawings, neg. 23441. Institute of Art of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw. All rights reserved. Image courtesy the American Folklife Center, Library of Congress). The prevailing image of the shtetl is the one in Fiddler on the Roof: a small, dirt-poor, strictly Jewish village. But shtetls in…
Dramatis personae: Addressing a playwright Out of the ArchivesHow to Find Arthur Miller Without Even Trying, or, The Perks of Being the First Ladyby Stefanie Halpern, Archival Processing Fellow, Center for Jewish History I was processing a collection on the Friends of Ida Kaminska Theatre, a foundation that existed for only a few years to raise funds and to book shows for Kaminska, the much-loved (and…
