Correspondence with Robinson, Jacob

Jacob Robinson (born Jokūbas Robinzonas; 1889-1977) was a US-American jurist, historian and politician of Jewish-Lithuanian origin. Emigrating to the US in 1940 he got involved in the re-establishment of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research and coordinated its work with other institutions. Moreover, he served as an expert consultant for the United Nations. See Bendikaitė, E. and D. R. Haupt (eds.), The Life, Times and Work of Jokūbas Robinzonas-Jacob Robinson, St. Augustin, Academia, 2015. 

Correspondence with Robinson, Jacob 

173 letters 

The correspondence centres on various Wiener Library issues, including the cataloguing of a large set of documents from the Nuremberg War Crime Trials, and the institute’s efforts to ensure sufficient finances. The latter refers specifically to challenges related to annual grants from the Claims Conference. Other subjects are the indexing of records from German war crimes trials, the idea of establishing a photo archive in The Wiener Library (01.10.1961), and other bibliographic works.

The correspondence further contains memos by Robinson to the Library and similar Jewish institutions providing research related information. This includes notes about archival collections built up by the Frankfurt branch of the United Restitution Organisation (URO), the foundation of the Zentralstelle zur Aufklärung nationalsozialistischer Verbrechen in Ludwigsburg, and an inventory of material available at the Berlin Document Center (BDC) in West Berlin.

Beside information requests by Robinson during his involvement in the Eichmann Trial in Jerusalem, Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem is briefly and critically discussed by Robinson and Alfred Wiener.

 

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