us-005578-irn50648
type: RecordSet
archival history: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
biographical history: Leonard H. Ehrlich (1924-2011) was born Leonhard Ehrlich to Josef and Helene Ehrlich, on 2 April 1924 in Vienna. In addition to Leonard, the Ehrlichs had a daughter, Leonore. Following the annexation of Austria by Germany and the Nazi seizure of power in 1938, the Ehrlichs sought to emigrate, with Leonore being the first who was able to leave, travelling to Britain on a"Kindertransport" Although Leonard sought to immigrate illegally to Palestine with a Zionist youth group, when his parents obtained an affidavit and visa, the three of them traveled to the United States in November 1939, and the family was eventually reunited with Leonore and moved to Chicago. Eventually Leonard was inducted into the U.S. Army, but before being sent to Europe, he married Edith Schwarz, who he had known from his school in Vienna, and whose own family arrived in the United States a few months after the Ehrlichs. In 1944 Ehrlich was sent to Europe and served in the Army as a medic, earning a Purple Heart and a Silver Star. Upon demobilization and return to the United States, Ehrlich pursued his academic studies, eventually pursuing graduate studies in psychology in Switzerland, at the University of Basel, and earning a doctorate in philosophy from Yale University. Ehrlich accepted a position in the philosophy department of the Univesity of Massachusetts--Amherst in 1956, where he served as a professor of philosophy, and beginning in 1981, as head of the university's Judaic studies department. He was also a renowned scholar of the philosopher Karl Jaspers, under whom he and Edith had studied in Basel, and whose works he later translated into English. Ehrlich retired from the University of Massachusetts in 1991, and dedicated much time in his remaining years to researching and writing about the role of the leaders of the Jewish community in Vienna during the Nazi era, in a work that was to be titled"Choices Under Duress of the Holocaust" and for which he interviewed Benjamin Murmelstein. E…
date: circa 1920-2005
has or had holder: us-005578
has or had identifier: 1
has or had some members with language: deu
has or had some members with language: eng
has or had subject: 843
has or had subject: 701
has or had subject: 002399
has record set type: Item
identifier: irn50648
record resource extent: boxes oversize folders 17 3
record resource structure: The Leonard and Edith Ehrlich papers are arranged as four series: 1. Correspondence 2. Research topics 3. Archival repositories 4. Writings
results or resulted from: 1
scope and content: The Leonard and Edith Ehrlich research papers consist of correspondence, copied documents, interview transcripts, trial transcripts, notes, typescript texts, and other similar materials compiled during the research and writing of a book to be titled “Choices Under Duress of the Holocaust,” an examination of the leadership of the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde Wien (Jewish Congregation of Vienna, or IKG) and the Jewish Council of Theresienstadt, and in particular the roles of Benjamin Murmelstein and Josef Löwenherz, in response to Nazi persecution of the Jewish community following the annexation of Austria by Germany in 1938, and the reconstitution of that community after the deportation of many of its members to Theresienstadt. The Correspondence series of the collection is relatively small, and consists of correspondence that was filed separately as such by the Ehrlichs, in some cases with research institutions, in others with individuals with whom they were in contact during the course of their project. The largest segment of this series, however, is that of correspondence with Benjamin Murmelstein, between 1976 and 1984, following the period of time in which the Ehrlichs visited him and interviewed him in Rome, as well as with Murmelstein’s son, Wolf, in the years following. The Research Topics series comprises the bulk of this collection, and consists of copied archival documents, notes, transcripts, clippings, and other material arranged by topic. Some of these were already filed in folders labeled as such when the collection was received, others were loose documents that were grouped together and arranged by the processing archivist at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Included in this series are a complete set of the typed transcripts of the interviews conducted by Leonard and Edith Ehrlich with Benjamin Murmelstein in 1977, as well as a complete copied set of the Aktenvermerke, or memoranda to the files, maintained by Josef Löwenherz in his role as…
title: Leonard and Edith Ehrlich research papers