Edmund Schechter papers

Edmund Schechter papers 

Edmund Schechter papers 

boxes oversize folders 6 2 

The Edmund Schechter papers contain correspondence, reports, articles, press releases, clippings, and scrapbooks documenting Schechter’s work in New York, Luxembourg, and Germany, his membership and continued interest in Kadimah, and investigations into his loyalty made by Senator McCarthy’s subcommittee. Subject files document Schechter’s early writing and speaking career in New York on the topic of North Africa; his military and civil service career at the Office of War Information (OWI), the American Broadcasting Service in Europe (ABSIE), Radio Luxembourg, Radio in the American Sector (RIAS), Radio München under the Information Control Division of the Military Government for Bavaria, and German Radio Operations of the United States High Commissioner in Germany (HICOG); Schechter’s defense against claims made during hearings by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations under Joseph McCarthy; and Schechter’s membership in and commemoration of the Jewish fraternity Kadimah. They contain correspondence, press releases, memoranda, reports, radio scripts, clippings, speeches, announcements, affidavits, photographs of Konrad Adenauer and the International Military Tribunal, interviews, invitations, song lyrics, and a drawing. Scrapbooks primarily contain newspaper clippings and memorabilia but they also include documents related to the subject files. Such documents include memoranda and scripts by Schechter from the OWI Italian Desk; guidance for the use of SHAEF material drafted by Schechter while at ABSIE; reporting for Radio Luxembourg by Schechter, including information about concentrations camps and displaced persons; Radio München/Bayrischer Rundfunk listener mail, including anti‐Semitic hate mail; HICOG reports, press releases, and memoranda; and other press releases, radio scripts, correspondence, and speeches and presentations by and about Schechter. Newspaper clippings include Schechter’s own articles about North Africa, articles about Schechter and the redevelopment of radio in Germany, and articles of general interest on subjects such as the occupation of Germany, concentration camps, the Nuremburg tribunals, anti‐Semitism, denazification, the redevelopment of German newspapers, American‐German relations, communism, and McCarthyism. The scrapbooks further contain cartoons, membership cards, travel order, wire reports, printed money from Theresienstadt, Buchenwald, and the Alliierte Militärbehörde in Austria, a Dachau concentration camp visitor’s pass, Nazi ephemera, and invitations, tickets, programs and menus from cultural events. 

The Edmund Schechter papers are arranged as two series: Series 1: Subject Files, 1941-1995; Series 2: Scrapbooks, 1941-1956