Call Number:

Arc MS 67

Repository:

University of Pennsylvania: Archives at the Library of the Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies

Extent:

.1 linear feet (1 volume)

Language Note:

This photograph album has captions that are largely in Hebrew, but contains some German.

Preferred Citation:

Holocaust survivor's photograph album, 1946-1948, Arc MS HS, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, University of Pennsylvania

Date:

1946-1948 (inclusive)

Form:

Photograph albums and Photographs

Abstract:

This photograph album, created by an unknown woman, gives insight into the life of a Holocaust survivor in displaced person camps and her immigration to Israel in the late 1940s. This collection consists of thirty-six photographs taken between the years of 1946 and 1948, including photographs which are both candid and posed.

According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum the Holocaust was, "...the systematic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million European Jews by the Nazi German regime and its allies and collaborators" that occurred from 1933 until 1945. In addition to the six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust, other groups persecuted and sent to camps by the Nazi regime were the Roma, political opponents, persons assumed to be homosexual, Jehovah's Witnesses, people with disabilities, and many others. During the Holocaust, the Nazis built dozens of concentration camps throughout the countries they occupied, to which the Nazis would deport millions of people for hard labor or death in gas chambers. Some of the camps were: Auschwitz-Birkenau, Bergen-Belsen, Treblinka, Buchenwald, Dachau, Theresienstadt, and Mauthausen.

After the Holocaust, survivors discovered that many of their family members were murdered and some found that their homes were destroyed or occupied by the German army or neighbors. As a result of this inability to return home and need for medical care from the malnourishment and starvation survivors faced, the Allied forces created displaced person camps. Although Bergen-Belsen was once a mass killing center during the war years, the largest displaced persons camp emerged quite close to the site in the summer of 1945, only closing in 1951 once the last displaced persons found a home.

While some Holocaust survivors reunited with family and returned home, many survivors tried to immigrate to British Mandatory Palestine, while others traveled to the United States to live with relatives who came in earlier immigration waves.

Works consulted:

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. "Introduction to the Holocaust." Holocaust Encyclopedia. https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/introduction-to-the-holocaust. Accessed on May 13, 2024.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. "Bergen-Belsen Displaced Persons Camp." Holocaust Encyclopedia. https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/bergen-belsen-displaced-persons-camp. Accessed on May 13, 2024.

This photograph album consists of thirty-six photographs taken between the years of 1946 and 1948. There are 1-2 photographs per page, with photographs that are both candid and posed. The bulk of the photographs were taken at displaced person camps in Germany as well as immigration centers in Israel.

This photograph album documents the life of an unknown, female Holocaust survivor who traveled through the displaced person (DP) camp of Bergen-Belsen and the Palestine Transit Camp in Bocholt, Germany, before settling in the areas of Kiryat Ata or Kiryat Tiv'on in the Haifa district. Some of the photographs in the album are dedicated to family members and her former students. Interspersed throughout pictures from DP camps are photographs of the creator in the Schloßberg mountains of Pegnitz, Germany, from childhood, and her pre-war community. The caption on the verso of page 2 and the recto of page six references the place, "Windischlaibach," which may refer to Ljubljana, Slovenia. The album's creator labeled the right photograph on page 7's recto as "Malka Avraham-Cohen," later referencing a Malka as her sister on the verso of page 8.