Jewish Studies: Primary Sources

Contains full-color, full-text searchable digitized primary source materials on the history of Jewish communities in America from their first arrival in New York in 1654 to today. Includes access to the entirety of six major organisational collections and twenty-four collections of personal papers from the American Jewish Historical Society in New York. Themes covered include: Business, industry and enterprise; Civil rights and liberties; Culture, literature and the arts; Early Jewish experience; Everyday life: personal and family narratives; Immigration and settlement; Politics and the law; Reflections on the Jewish experience; Religion, tradition and community; War, conflict and persecution; and Welfare, health and education

Collection of "primary sources for the study and understanding of the challenges facing the European peoples in the aftermath of World War II." Topics covered include the administration of refugee camps across Europe including England, Germany, Italy, Hungary and Yugoslavia; displaced Persons Assembly Centre reports; Jewish Relief Unit field reports; British Military Government in Germany; Belsen DP Camp; Maclean Mission in Italy; Politics of the Refugee Crisis; and, strengthening of the Zionist cause.

Provides broad coverage of Yiddish words of all origins: Hebrew-Aramaic, Slavic, Romance, and Germanic. Includes many regional and dialectal variants, alongside standard literary Yiddish forms.

This collection provides unique documents on the investigation and prosecution of war crimes committed by Nazi concentration camp commandants and camp personnel. Documents include: correspondence; trial records and transcripts; investigatory material, such as interrogation reports and trial exhibits; clemency petitions and reviews; photographs of atrocities; newspaper clippings; and pamphlets. Many concentration (and later extermination) camps and sub-camps are represented in this collection, including Mauthausen, Dachau, Belsen-Bergen, Buchenwald, Treblinka, Sobibor, sub-camp Gros-Raming, sub-camp Gusen I, sub-camp Ebensee, and others.

It was within the context of evidence collection that the War Crimes Branch received copies of documents known as "SAFEHAVEN Reports." SAFEHAVEN was the code name of a project of the Foreign Economic Administration, in cooperation with the State Department and the military services, to block the flow of German capital across neutral boundaries and to identify and observe all German overseas investments. In order to coordinate research and intelligence-sharing regarding SAFEHAVEN-related topics, the War Crimes Branch received SAFEHAVEN reports from various agencies of the U.S. Government, as well as SAFEHAVEN-related military attaché reports, regarding the clandestine transfer of German assets outside of Germany that could be used to rebuild the German war machine or the Nazi party after the war, as well as art looting and other acts that elicited the interest of Allied intelligence agencies during the war. Another aspect of the SAFEHAVEN project was the restoration of looted art treasures to their rightful owners.

Much has been published chronicling the role of Pope Pius XII regarding refugees, the Holocaust and relations with America during the war years and the immediate post-war period. This publication provides a wealth of unique correspondence, reports and analyses, memos of conversations, and personal interviews exploring such themes U.S.-Vatican relations, Vatican’s role in World War II, Jewish refugees, Italian anti-Jewish laws during the papacy of Pius XII, and the pope’s personal knowledge of the treatment of European Jews.