Herbert Strauss Addenda 1933-2000

The Herbert Strauss Addenda contains subject files and writings from Strauss’ position as the executive director of the American Federation of Jews from Central Europe. These include correspondence, reports, newspaper clippings, newsletters and pamphlets, and writings, including manuscripts and dissertations in the field of German-Jewish history and related topics.Materials pertaining to the American Federation of Jews from Central Europe include correspondence, proposals, and notes for a history of the Federation, as well as the Federation’s newsletters. Herbert Strauss was also the founding director of the Research Foundation for Jewish Immigration. The subject files include contracts, correspondence, resources, and notes for two of the Foundation’s publications, Jewish Immigrants of the Nazi period in the USA and the International Biographical Dictionary of Central European Emigres, 1933-1945.Audiocassettes and videocassettes have been removed to the LBI Audiovisual Collection.Herbert Arthur Strauss, historian, academician, and teacher, was born on June 1, 1918, in Würzburg, Bavaria, Germany. He studied German history and theology at Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums starting in 1938. Between 1940 and 1942, he served as an auxiliary rabbi for the Jüdische Gemeinde zu Berlin. When the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums was closed down by German authorities in 1942, Strauss and his future wife, Lotte (Schloss), went into hiding, where they remained until June 1943 when they escaped to Switzerland.In late 1943, Herbert Strauss began his studies at the University of Bern, where he concentrated on European History. After Herbert received his doctoral degree in 1946, the Strausses immigrated to the United States, where Herbert Strauss initially served as an instructor at the City College of New York, eventually becoming a full professor. In New York, Herbert Strauss became active in German-Jewish communal affairs. He was a member of several charitable and communal Jewish organizations, most notably the American Federation of Jews from Central Europe, of which he was the Executive Director. The AFJCE was an organization that helped German-Jewish immigrants acclimate to life in the United States and advocated on their behalf. He was also the founding director of the Research Foundation for Jewish Immigration, in 1971. In 1980, Herbert Strauss helped to found, and became the Director of the Zentrum für Antisemitismusforschung at the Technische Universität, Berlin. The Center was dedicated to the study of anti-Semitism and to research on the migration of German-Jewish intellectuals during the Nazi period. His seminal work, published under the auspices of the Research Foundation for Jewish Immigration and the Institut für Zeitgeschichte in Munich, Germany, was the two-volume International Biographical Dictionary of Central European Emigres, 1933-1945 (1983).Strauss was a prolific writer on a variety of topics such as acculturation and assimilation, ethnicity, German-Jewish relations and history, and immigration. Additionally, he was a regular contributor to a number of professional journals and magazines, where he published his articles and reviews. He was also an editor, translator, and a member of numerous academic panels.Finding aid available onlineProcesseddigitize