About the Collection

The Holocaust and Jewish Studies Collection consists of seven, distinct archival resources that document the lives of Harrisburg-area Holocaust survivors, including the Linda Schwab Papers, the Toni Klar Collection, as well as the Samuel and Kay Freiberg Papers.  Some materials in the collection, including 69 oral histories of Holocaust survivors and liberators, were donated by the Jewish Federation of Greater Harrisburg to the Penn State Harrisburg Library and subsequently preserved in the archives.  Additional acquisitions have been received by Dr. Simon Bronner, former Director of the Center for Holocaust and Jewish Studies at Penn State Harrisburg.  

Pictured above is a photographic postcard ca. 1973 from the Toni Klar Collection. The postcard illustrates two monuments dedicated to the victims who died at the Dachau Concentration Camp located just outside of Munich, Germany. The image on the left shows the monument bearing the inscription "Do Not Forget," which is situated in the current Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site. On the right is a monument, inscribed with "Remember the Victims," found in the Dachau town cemetery.

About the Harrisburg-Area Holocaust Oral History Collection

Since 2020, Archives and Special Collections has focused on a project to complete transcriptions for 80 oral histories of Holocaust survivors, liberators, and witnesses from the Harrisburg area.  In partnership with the U. S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, the oral histories are being transcribed by archives staff using the software Trint.com.  The transcriptions for each oral history are not yet available for research online.  However, a list of the oral histories in our collection can be browsed here: Harrisburg-Area Holocaust Oral Histories.  Until the transcripts are completed and available, videos of many of these oral histories can be found on the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum's website at https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn42133.  

Finding Aid for the Collection

This collection is being processed, and the finding aid is still in development.  Please contact Heidi Abbey Moyer, Archivist and Humanities Reference Librarian and Coordinator of Archives and Special Collections, at hna2@psu.edu for more assistance.