Preservation Assessment of Archival Holdings

FAIN: PG-233657-16

Kupferberg Holocaust Resource Center (Bayside, NY 11364-1432)
Dan Leshem (Project Director: May 2015 to September 2017)

A preservation assessment of the center’s archives, which encompass approximately 200 distinct collections of materials on the Holocaust.  Included are prints and photographs, letters, family albums, postcards, newspapers, magazines, sheet music, magazines, stamps, textiles, artifacts, and works of art. Many of the collections were donated to the center by members of the local community in Queens and represent family histories of the Holocaust. The collections continue to be used extensively for education and public events within the Queensborough Community College community, and also broadly by organizations interested in the Holocaust, genocide, and human rights.

The Harriet and Kenneth Kupferberg Holocaust Resource Center and Archives (KHRCA) at Queensborough Community College (CUNY) is an educational laboratory that serves hundreds of students from high schools and colleges, community members, and researchers. The center hosts dozens of lectures, film screenings, commemoration events, and two original exhibits each year. The archival holdings of the KHRCA contain several hundred collections of letters, identity documents, recorded oral histories, and artifacts relating to the Holocaust. These items document the Holocaust's impact on Queens before, during, and after the war. The letters are mostly between family held under Nazi occupation and their relatives in the United States, primarily in Queens. Our identity card artifacts include ghetto IDs, ration cards from various European ghettos, original money transfer orders from the Jewish Joint to ghetto inhabitants, and similar materials.