Eric W. Zielenziger Collection 1890-2010

The Eric Zielenziger Collection includes materials dealing with members of the Zielenziger family. The bulk of the collection consists of Ruth Zielenziger’s teaching materials. Materials dealing with other members of the family include vital and school documents, certificates, financial documents, some family correspondence, and genealogical tables. There is also a large number of Kurt Zielenziger’s manuscripts that include lectures, essays, and fragments of larger scale works. The bulk of the manuscripts are typed, with a fair amount of hand-written manuscripts also present in the collection. There is a very unique item in the collection - Lilly Zielenziger’s dairy that she kept while at Westerbork camp. Additionally, there is a hand-made children’s book, 'Ein winziges Bilderbuch voor de lange Pim!', written in 1946 in Amsterdam. The book tells the story of Eric Zielenziger and his parents. Unfortunately, the author is unknown. Other materials include a few photographs and clippings, mostly about Kurt Zielenziger.Eric Wolfgang Zielenziger was born on February 6th, 1920, in Berlin, Germany into an affluent Jewish family. His mother was Lilly Weyl Zielenziger and his father was Kurt Zielenziger, a well known economist and journalist. In 1933, the family moved to France and the following year to Amsterdam, Holland. In Amsterdam, Kurt Zielenziger became the leader of the Jewish Central Information Office. While in Holland, Eric Zielenziger joined Maccabi Hatzair, a Jewish Youth Organization. After graduating from high school in 1938 he got a job with an export/import company but lost it in 1941, after Germans fired all the Jews from the company. Later that year he got a job with Joodseraad (Jewish Council). After Eric’s parents were sent to the camp Westerbork in 1943, he went into hiding and stayed underground until May 1945. In 1944 Kurt and Lilly Zielenziger were transferred from Westerbork to Bergen-Belsen. Kurt Zielenziger died there in July 1944 and Lilly Zielenziger died of typhus in May 1945. After the war ended, Eric worked for the Joint Distribution Committee in Amsterdam, before immigrating to the United States.Eric Zielenziger was a trader with Felix Kramarsky Corp., and a sales executive with Accurate Ingredients of Syosset, NY. He also served as secretary-treasurer of the PEC Israel Economic Corporation. Eric Zielenziger was married to Ruth Zielenziger, née Herrmann, a professor at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in New York. Eric Zielenziger died on November 20, 2010.Processeddigitize