The archives of the New York-based Leo Baeck Institute (now part of the Center for Jewish History) will be going online as of Oct. 16 as a portal called DigiBaeck. This will represent an unprecedented resource of digitally accessible primary source material documenting the heritage of German-speaking Jewry in the modern era — about 3.5 million pages of material. The Leo Baeck Institute partnered with the Internet Archive in realizing the project.
“Before the Nazi seizure of power, Jews in Germany probably had better opportunities for success than Jews anywhere else in the world,” Carol Kahn Strauss, the institute’s executive director, said in a statement. “As a new Jewish community once again flourishes in Germany, it is all the more important to ensure it also has broad access to this past.”
According to the web site, the digitalized archives include:
Archival Materials – Nearly 75 percent of LBI archival collections, which include personal documents, correspondence, family and community histories, genealogical materials, business records has been digitized. LBI is committed to digitizing its entire archives, including all new materials added to the collections.
Art and Objects – 2,000 items from the art collection have been digitized. These include many original works as well as prints, and a few extensive collections of works by individual artists such as Hermann Struck and Hugo Steiner-Prag.
Books and Periodicals – Though most of the library collection has not been digitized due to copyright restrictions, unique and rare items are available through DigiBaeck. These include rare renaissance books, artists illustrated portfolios, and selected periodicals.
Photographs – LBI’s entire collection of over 25,000 photographs has been digitized. In many cases, there is a record for each individual photograph, even if they were part of a larger collection. Other photographs may be contained within archival collections or within photo albums that were digitized as a single object.
Audio Recordings In addition to rare recordings of Jewish liturgical music, DigiBaeck includes a growing collection of over 250 oral history interviews with Austrian-Jewish emigres who fled to New York to escape the Nazis. These interviews are conducted by volunteers with support from the Austrian government.