Yesterday we celebrated the accomplishments of National Archives staff across the country in our annual Archivist’s Awards Ceremony.

I read from Senate Resolution 99 which commends public servants for their dedication and continued service to the United States and acknowledging that ” … public service is a noble calling.” I also read from President Obama’s Public Service Recognition Week greetings: “In communities across our country, public servants at the Federal, state, and local levels tirelessly carry out the work of our government. Diligently serving without the expectation of fanfare, they enforce our laws, teach our children, and lay a strong foundation for our Nation’s progress. Our dedicated employees are committed to a cause greater than personal ambition, and each day, they tackle many of our most urgent challenges and help us move closer to a more perfect Union.”

Photograph of desk installed in National Archives Library, 1950. National Archives Identifier 3493214

We created a little internal fanfare yesterday by recognizing staff for protecting and recovering stolen records, for outstanding service and support of our nation’s veterans, for achievement in engaging our citizens, for developing the Presidential Memorandum and Directive on Managing Government Records, for efforts to increase National Declassification Center production, to name just a few of awards tied closely to our Transformation pillars.

We also celebrated long term service milestones of … [ Read all ]

In early December 2009, Google announced on their blog titled “Personalized Search for Everyone” that they would be using 57 “signals” derived from your previous searching behavior in order to predict the sites you were most likely to choose in your search. Netflix, Yahoo, Facebook, and YouTube, to mention just a few, use similar predictive Internet filters based on who you are, past searching behavior, and limiting hits to what fits your profile. Eli Pariser in his book, The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding from You, describes the result as “invisible autopropaganda-indoctrinating us with our own ideas, amplifying our desires for things that are familiar and leaving us oblivious to the dangers lurking in the dark territory of the unknown.” A space outside our own comfort zone where there is less room for those chance encounters that bring insight and learning.

Cass Sunstein, in his book, Infotopia: How Many Minds Produce Knowledge, describes the problem as information cocoons-”communications universes in which we hear only what we choose and only what comforts and pleases us.” Where we choose to get our information, what we choose to read or listen to, and the avoidance of those channels that are outside our own comfort zone. As Pariser reminds us, “Creativity is often sparked by the collision of ideas from difference disciplines and cultures.”

Don’t believe… [ Read all ]

When I first saw the latest addition to our artists’ book collection, I thought “Now I’ve seen everything!”

A completely blank book?

All the pages are blank! As we have seen before on this blog, artists’ books come in all shapes and sizes. We even hold a copy of the world’s largest magazine issue. So anything is possible.

But then I saw the small accessory that accompanies the book – an ultraviolet flashlight!

The plot thickens…

The book is titled 2013 and was created by Justin James Reed. It was printed using UV-spectrum inkjet printer ink in a limited edition of 100 copies, and published by Horses Think Press. It was selected as a “best photobook” of 2012 by the British Journal of Photography.

Click to view slideshow.

View the book in a darkened room using the flashlight, and the content appears. A recent reviewer noted the theatricality of the “gestures required of the reader to illuminate the pages and to reveal the images, which begin to take on life and even volume. The time required by the process of perceiving each page is part of the intentional transformation of the passive viewer into an active agent, and the image into material to be discovered.”¹  Viewings of the book as performances have been held at the New York Art Book Fair, and at the Photobook Slam held as part of C/O Berlin Book Days on May 26, 2012. The Berlin performance was captured on video and can be viewed here.

Come visit the Archives and Special Collections and create your own personal performance of 2013.

¹Giannetti, Claudia. “2013,” PhotoBook Review 003 (supplement to Aperture Fall 2012), p. 21.

My summer internship at the City of Vancouver Archives was filled with wonderful experiences along with the occasional adventure, so much so that it has taken me a while to catch my breath and finally write about it. As a student in the Master of Art Conservation program at Queen’s University, the Archives fostered an ideal learning environment for a conservator-in-training to reinforce the skills acquired through the past academic year. I was fortunate to learn from not one but two experienced conservators. Working under the supervision of Sue Bigelow and Rosaleen Hill, the Digital Conservators at the Archives, I had the privilege of taking in a double dose of valuable knowledge.

The Award of Merit 1943, one of the many spectacular works of art found in the Archives. This image consists of merged photographs of the parchment before (left) and after (right). treatment.

Continue reading →

The Public Interest Declassification Board received recognition at a recent academic conference titled The Legal and Civil Policy Implications of “Leaks” at the American University Washington College of Law.  A panel focusing on the legislative response to “leaks” discussed what impact over-classification and the current state of the security classification system have on the prevalence of leaks.  Panelist John B. Dickas, the Legislative Counsel to Senator Ron Wyden on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, cited the Board’s Report to the President on Transforming the Security Classification System. He agreed that over-classification is a pervasive problem among system users and that the declassification process does not keep pace with user demand.  Moderator Sharon Bradford Franklin, Senior Counsel at the Constitution Project, noted the Board’s report prompted 31 organizations concerned with the Government’s classification activity to send a letter to the President urging him to establish a steering committee as recommended in the Board’s report.

The academic conference gathered government, academic and other private sector experts to discuss the legal and civil policy implications of “leaks” in the “WikiLeaks” era, examining the history of leaks over recent decades, their growing significance in Freedom of Information Act litigation, potential legislative responses on the subject, and the future that can be foreseen with continued advances in information technology.  More information about the academic conference is available here.

The National Security Archive recently highlighted a recommendation from the Board’s report on its Unredacted blog.  The post focused on an aspect of U.S. nuclear deployment history from the early years of the Cold War.  It mentioned the Board’s recommendation to allow obsolete historical nuclear information to be reviewed for declassification.  You can read the blog post here. The Board heard testimony and received extensive comments on the need to reform how agencies treat historical “Formerly Restricted Data.”  Transforming the Security Classification System offers a solution that allows the declassification review of information that is of no operational or military use so the American public can better understand the role nuclear weapons played in winning the Cold War.

If the George Turner letters mentioned yesterday aren’t enough for you, you can now also read the text of a 19th-century whaler who abandoned his ship.

Back in February we had a visit from some Fulbright scholars who began the process of transcribing the Daniel Mowry letters in our Nicholson Whaling Manuscripts Collection. We haven’t yet had a chance to digitize the letters, but we wanted to make the transcriptions available, and you can now find the text of all of them on one page. These are some pretty illuminating letters telling a great story.

Here at Trinity University, all anticipate the end of the semester, and student and faculty life is abuzz as projects and papers are due, and seniors wrap up their undergraduate life.  The digital collections contain two sets of photographs that represent Reverend Black’s own time as a student at Andover Newton Theological Seminary (as it was called in those days) in Newton, Massachusetts, which he attended from 1940 to 1943.  The photographs are candid snapshots, primarily of Reverend Black and his fellow students studying, or enjoying leisure time and each others company in their residential dormitory.
Over the years of his life, Reverend Black often remarked that his time at the school was the first time he had ever lived in a non-segregated society. The experience was no doubt similar for other African Americans from the South attending Andover Newton Theological Seminary in the years before desegregation of the South. As is seen in the second photo, Samuel H. James, Jr. was also at the school at the time. He became Reverend S.H. James of the Second Baptist Church in San Antonio, was the first African American elected as councilman to the San Antonio city council, and was a founding civil rights leader in San Antonio in his own right.
Others who went on to become influential ministers also appear in some of the photographs, such as Alfonso Leon Lowry and Edward McCreary. The Trinity Digital Collections provides access to the thesis Reverend Black wrote to gain his degree, Communism as a Religion, made available by kind permission of the Franklin Trask Library at Andover Newton Theological School.

Claude W. Black, Jr. at study
Andover photos, part one 

Samuel H. James, Jr.

Andover photos, part one

Playing chess

The image above is a sketch from a letter written by George Turner, a Rhode Island Civil War soldier whose correspondence has recently been scanned and transcribed by URI student Michaela Keating. The online collection (available here) includes nearly 200 letters, mostly sent by Turner to his parents at home in Rhode Island, dating from 1861 to 1864. Taken together they offer an evolving portrait of one soldier’s daily life over the years of the war and his developing attitudes toward race, the South and the purpose of the war.

Turner wrote the letter from which the image above was taken in December of 1861, not long after the Union capture of Fort Wells in Hilton Head, South Carolina, where Turner spent the majority of his time during the war. In the letter, Turner describes his entry into the fort and the circumstances of his drawing:

Soon after entering the Fort we were allowed to stroll around and look about. And during my stroll I cam across a gun carriage that was completely smashed up and while I was looking at it I picked up picked up part of a man’s ear and some teeth and while looking at it come to conclusion that this man had changed his southern views and gone to another land. And now that I think of it of will give you another drawing [sketch of two figures in a tent with “Traveller’s Rest” written on the side of the tent] The picture which I bring before your view this time represents your humble servant writing a letter to his Rhode Island friends while one of his mess mates lays on the ground smoking. The name which you see marked on the tent is marked with a led pencil. But I pity the poor fellow who comes there for rest if he does not belong there. Now I have lived in just such a house as you see just four months on the 20th this month, and during that that time I have not taken off my pants olny when I change my under clothes or to wash all over. And I am just as tuff as a birch I am fat rugged and saucy. I can swallow a roast turkey at one gullup. Yesterday we had the first white bread we have had since the 23 day of Oct and when we got our loaf we went about looking at it like so many boys with a new year’s present. But after a while we came to the conclusion to eat it and the way it went down my illustrious gullet was a caution to lookers on.

The letter is typical in its attention to the daily details of camp life. Also typical is the discussion that takes place just prior to this excerpt in which Turner displays antagonism toward the “contraband” freed slaves present at the fort. It’s a theme that develops throughout the course of Turner’s letters, as he grows to despise the former slaves he feels are being better treated than the soldiers.

For more information about the George Turner correspondence, visit our online exhibition, which provides background information about Turner and some of the major themes of his letters. And visit the digital collection to read the letters yourself. As of now over 100 letters have been transcribed, with more to come. And if you’d like to take part and try transcribing some of the letters yourself, just click the “Transcribe this item” link at the bottom of an item and then click the “edit” button.

(If you’re interested in Turner you might also want to check out the Summer/Fall 2012 issue of Rhode Island History (vol. 70.2), which features an article by Kirsten Hammerstrom on Turner titled “Souvenirs of War” (pp. 74-86).

As Special Collections staff, next Wednesday, May 1^st is our opportunity to truly become aware of our role in preserving our unique collections and protecting the environment in which they’re stored.

Named by the Society of American Archivists after Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, and Wilma struck the Gulf Coast, “MayDay” – this year and every year – is a nationwide effort whose goal is to save our archival materials, no matter which type of cultural institution in which we work.

Here are a few things we can do that day that will make a difference when and if an emergency occurs, tasks that we can accomplish in a short period of time:

• Quickly survey collections areas to insure that nothing is stored directly on the floor, where they would be vulnerable to water damage.
• Note the location of fire exits and fire extinguishers.
• Review basic emergency procedures – currently being updated – in our Reading Room behind the service desk.
• Familiarize ourselves with the evacuation plan and where emergency supplies are stored – a good chance to check that flashlights are working!
• Update the contact information in our department staff list

These are just a few suggestions; there’s probably more we can think of. And it’s important that we sustain this effort, not just on MayDay.

The Beyond the Text Symposium at the The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library sounded brilliant and I was grateful to everyone live tweeting the papers. I have put together a selection of the tweets on Storify, adding in the titles of the papers where possible.

It can be found here

WNYC’s Chief Concert Engineer Edward Haber recorded Richie Havens for WNYC and had this recollection.

Richie Havens passed away a few days ago at a relatively young 72, and even just a couple of years ago, when I saw him at (le) Poisson Rouge (on the site of the old Village Gate where he undoubtedly had performed many times), his voice was as strong as ever.  On the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend 1989, WNYC recorded for broadcast (or was it broadcast live?—I can’t remember almost 24 years later) New Voices in Folk, an almost four hour festival of up and coming folk musicians at the Central Park Bandshell.  Tom Rush was the host, and there were performances by the not yet famous Shawn Colvin (her first album came out that year), Greg Brown, and Canadian songwriter Connie Kaldor, among others.  But the one surprise performer was even then not a new voice—Richie Havens closed the show with one song.  Here’s that 1989 performance of Jackson Browne’s “Lives In The Balance.”

This week, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) will dedicate the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum on the campus of Southern Methodist University (SMU) in Dallas.  The facility will open to the public on May 1.

Bush Library exterior, evening. Photo courtesy of the George W. Bush Presidential Center

The Bush Library is the 13^th of NARA’s federally owned Presidential libraries, whose holdings span eight decades of American history.  It also increases our presence in Texas, where we already operate the Lyndon B. Johnson Library in Austin, George H.W. Bush’s library in College Station, and our regional archives and records center in Fort Worth.

We look forward to developing partnerships with the George W. Bush Presidential Center and with SMU to present joint programming, share our expertise, draw on our holdings, and bring together SMU’s academic departments and the library. These kinds of partnerships at the 12 other Presidential libraries have enriched the learning experience for students and scholars.

Without the preservation of and access to these Presidential materials, the history of our nation would be incomplete. They document the key decisions and policies and how crucial decisions were made. Also, through exhibits, educational initiatives, and public programs, the libraries perform a critical outreach mission in their communities and beyond.

The new Bush Library holds 70 million… [ Read all ]

When we first told you about our new search system, we said that it was on a rapid development cycle and that there would be improvements. We’re pleased to tell you about one upgrade that gives you on-site access to thousands more digital objects and another that makes it easier to do research at home. Developed for us by Artefactual Systems, these open source enhancements could be adapted by other institutions using the same database software.

The big change

Until now, digital objects that were under the copyright of a 3rd party (other than City of Vancouver’s copyright) could only be viewed online as a tiny thumbnail. Now they can be viewed in full resolution in our Reading Room through our online search. This works on your laptop in the Reading Room (using our wifi) as well as at our public computers.

Making it work

Come down to the Archives and

1. Connect to the Reading Room wireless network, “COV Archives”
2. Go to the login page: searcharchives.vancouver.ca/;user/login
3. Login with the email: readingroom@vancouver.ca
4. Enter the password: readingroom

If you leave the Reading Room with your laptop or log out from our network, you will no longer be able to see the copyrighted images.

Why we’re doing this

Under copyright law, we don’t have the right to publish these objects to the Web. Until now, we have only been publishing a thumbnail image, which is permitted as it is a small excerpt of a work.

We are allowed to make the objects available in the Reading Room, in the same way we can bring a copyrighted item out from storage for you to view. Making them accessible through the search system is fast and easy for both staff and researchers.

Self copying

We already allow you to make copies—with your camera, or using the microfilm printer—of materials under third-party copyright for fair dealing purposes. This also applies to the copies of digital objects we provide in our search system. You are responsible for getting the permission of the copyright holder for uses other than fair dealing.

So go ahead and email them to yourself, or copy them to a USB drive!

What’s under third-party copyright

Under the old system, you couldn’t see any materials under third-party copyright online. Now you have to be aware of which materials may be freely re-used and which ones require permission of the copyright owner.

The description for each digital object in our system will display what we know about its copyright status in the Rights Area. Here’s a quick guide to what you’ll see.

This item is in the public domain and all replication is allowed. You can use it for anything:

This item is copyrighted to the City of Vancouver and all uses are allowed without seeking permission:

This item is copyrighted to a known third party, who needs to give permission for any re-use other than fair dealing provisions:

This item is presumed to be under copyright but the owner of the copyright is unknown to us. You may be able to determine the owner with some research. It may only legally be re-used for fair dealing purposes.

Bonus for those researching at home

We received feedback that it was frustrating to be tempted by an interesting thumbnail on a list of results only to click through to find that the digital object was not viewable online. We’ve added some language to fix this.

If it says “Digital copy not on web”, then you won’t be able to view the digital object at home. You will still be able to see a more detailed description of the object if you click through to the single description.

The appearance varies with the browser and operating system. It’s yellow in Firefox on a Mac.

We hope these two changes make your research more efficient. As always, we welcome feedback.

This is a very strange portrait. It depicts two individuals (off-center and not filling the frame): Abel Roper (who published a newspaper called the Post Boy starting in 1695) and his nephew and assistant Edward King. Roper’s publications tended to make people angry (apparently angry enough to pull off his wig and beat him).

The curious emblem at the bottom of the print depicts a pillory and what appears to be another form of punishment device (leave a note in the comments if you know its proper name) with pages nailed to the bars. And the motto (“Nec lex est justior ulla”) is an abbreviated and modified form of a passage by Ovid that translates as “There is no law more just than that the plotters of death should perish by their own designs.” Often connected in biblical commentaries with Haman’s execution on the gallows he had originally built for his enemies, the lines point to the irony of being destroyed by your own schemes. Used here, beneath the portrait of a man well-known for using print as a political weapon, is it an indication that this was a hostile depiction?

So, I delved into the archives and discovered that Trinity has a thirty year history of submitting floats to the Battle of Flowers–I found several fun photos of floats we constructed, and I also found some interesting tidbits of information about Trinity student’s interest in and love of Fiesta. Last but not least, I made sure to display Trinity’s collection of Fiesta medals, since they perfectly represent Trinity’s great way of getting into the Fiesta spirit!

Make sure to stop by Special Collections this month and check out our Fiesta exhibit! 

–Faith Bradham, ’13

I really need to get out more. I mean out around campus. Despite having worked at Amherst for over a decade, I somehow never heard about boulder sitting on the south side of the Octagon until recently. On the occasions I’ve gone past it, I’m sure I didn’t notice it.

A large bowlder and friends

This may seem like a minor offense – it is, after all, just a rock on campus, right? But knowing the history of the College is mandatory in the archives. It’s our raison d’être. We seek to know everything about our turf, and then to make it possible for others to know it too.

So when I heard about this boulder, I immediately reached into my bag of paranoias: surely I alone was ignorant of the facts surrounding the boulder. I would have to hide my ignorance from my colleagues. My stomach churned.

But perhaps I’m wrong. Perhaps other people don’t know about the rock either. On the assumption, therefore, that my reader may also be ignorant of the facts, let me set them down here with the few relevant documents that remain to us.

President Edward Hitchcock, ca. 1854

The story begins with Edward Hitchcock, as so many Amherst College stories do. The man was everywhere back in the day, and his influence on the College in those early years was unequaled, and may be still. Probably we should be called Hitchcock College. A clergyman, a geologist, a professor, and for many years a president of Amherst College, Hitchcock roamed the area in search of its geological history. Geology was his passion.

“The Geology Around Amherst College,” from Hitchcock’s “Reminiscences” (1863)”

Main Street looking east toward Pelham, ca. 1880. Dickinson family houses on the left.

One day in 1855, Hitchcock was walking along Main Street when he glimpsed a chunk of rock poking out of the ground at the edge of Edward Dickinson’s property. The road was being graded, turning up rocks previously invisible. No doubt Hitchcock was taking the opportunity to scavenge for interesting bits when he came upon this choice specimen.

In an article for The American Journal of Science and Arts,* Hitchcock described the discovery and how the students in his geology class moved the 8-ton boulder to the Octagon (here called the “Geological Cabinet”):

Clever man, that Hitchcock. One can just imagine him suggesting hopefully to his students that he “doubted their ability” to move the boulder. No doubt the Class of ’57 sought to please him and would have moved heaven and earth, let alone the boulder.

Three years later an article in the Springfield Republican about a meeting of the American Association of Science featured a colorful version of the tale, as related by President William A. Stearns. Here, Pelham is the original location of the boulder, rather than Montague, where Hitchcock had placed it in his earlier article.

Springfield Republican, Aug. 8, 1859. William Augustus Stearns was the president “out of town” when the boulder was moved.

The local Hampshire-Franklin Express also chronicled the spectacle:

Hampshire-Franklin Express, June 6, 1856

I wondered about the unnamed song mentioned in the article. Was it really possible that a song with the refrain of “Coki-chi-lunk” could be “sad, pathetic, and affecting”? Or was the reporter being funny? I wondered if I might be able to determine what the song was and looked in the files for the class of 1857. This item was in the general file for the class.

The Express article above mentioned Alvah L. Frisbie as having delivered the oration when the rock reached its destination, and a notice buried in the July, 1856 Amherst Collegiate mentions a second student, Nathan R. Morse, describing him as the marshal of the class.

Men Who Stare Down Bowlders: Members of the Class of 1857 at their Vigintennial Meeting. Morse and Frisbie are left and right of center respectively.

I’ve managed to get through this post without mentioning Emily Dickinson, but it was always my intention to bring her into it, for the rock came from in front of her house. It would have taken no effort at all to watch the proceedings from her bedroom or from one of the rooms below, and it’s hard to think she didn’t. It must’ve been something to see (literally and figuratively, in her case). There are no letters from the period, so we don’t know if she commented about the occasion anywhere, and she seems not to have mentioned it in any poems. Even so, she was very likely the hidden spectator at the event, or perhaps she even departed from what was becoming her habit of seclusion to bring water or food for the workers.

If you’ve not yet noticed the rock on the south side of the Octagon, have a look at it the next time you walk by. You can’t miss it.

********************

*American Journal of Science and Arts, Vol. XXII, Nov., 1856, pp. 397-400.

Fourth in a series about the BC Sugar records

Three laboratory staff members in 1916: Maggie McKenzie, Ernie Abbott and R.B.  Reference code: 2011-092.1854.

The science of sugar! The refining of sugarcane or sugar beets to make the sugar products that we all know and love requires expertise and scientific precision. The science carried out at BC Sugar is well reflected in the records that were donated to the City of Vancouver Archives. I would like to share with you some of the records that show the science and scientists that worked at the company.

Alex McKelvie, first chemist, in front of BC Sugar laboratory. Reference code: 2011-092.3353.

Chemists were not the only scientists employed by BC Sugar; several agriculturists and plant geneticists were also on staff. Still, chemistry played an important role in ensuring the creation of consistent products and in researching new.

A page from the laboratory book which records the first production of Rogers’ Golden Syrup. Reference code: AM1592-1-S1-F20.

Creating Rogers’ Golden Syrup, a syrup that did not crystalize at room temperature or during storage, was difficult. In 1914, this was achieved by chief chemist Robert Boyd. The above page, from an early laboratory notebook, shows a summary of some successful experiments that lead to the development of Rogers’ Golden Syrup.

Experimental packaging of Rogers’ Golden Syrup in glass bottles. Photograph taken in the #1 Lab, 1955. Reference code: 2011-092.1659.

Many people remember the tins that Rogers’ Golden Syrup was originally sold in. Many customers found them useful for various things once empty, such as storing nails or wooden spoons. The move to glass bottles was not taken lightly. The new packaging was tested in the laboratory because it would affect many things such as the appearance of the colour of the syrup packaging and shipping procedures.

Sugar crystals during an experiment. The label reads: ‘1 Sugar C953; 750 mls; NY seed.’ June 11, 1969. Reference code: 2011-092.0221.1.

Icing sugar crystals. The label reads: Icing sugar B959-3. June 5, 1969. Reference code: 2011-092.0222.1.

The BC Sugar fonds contains many photographs and negatives of various kinds of sugars in solutions or at different stages during the refining process. In addition to these photographs of sugar samples and crystals, the BC Sugar records also contain laboratory notes, formulas and experiment results.

Camera set up for photographing sugar crystals with Linhof camera. May 1972. Reference code: 2011-092.4596.

Here is an example of the laboratory staff taking a photograph of the configuration of the camera used for taking photographs of sugar crystals. They may have also been excited about their Linhof camera.

Page from a book containing detailed, handwritten instructions and formulas for testing sugar and sugar products. This book was maintained between 1910 and 1925. Reference code: AM1592-S11-F5.–

A BC Sugar standard test used on cube sugar. 1957. Reference code: AM1592-1-S1-F27.

I have featured two sample pages from the books of tests, formulas and other instructions created at BC Sugar for use at their refineries. The fonds also contains results of daily and weekly testing at BC Sugar.

Two pages from the BC Sugar lab boy duty book. Reference code: AM1592-S11-F2.

Martin Rogers penned the above well-thumbed lab boy duty book. From the worn nature of the two lab boy duty books in the fonds, it seems likely that the lab boy referred to this manual often, or brought it with him as he carried out the assigned tasks for each day of the week. Many of the duties involved cleaning but the lab boy was entrusted with some routine experiments.

People hard at work in the No.1 Laboratory, ca. 1935. Reference code: 2011-092.0517.

The BC Sugar fonds is a rich resource that will fuel research for people of diverse interests from the history of our beautiful city to labour relations and unions, and from cultural anthropology (the culture and politics of food) and the history of science to genealogists whose family members worked at BC Sugar. Such future use of their records may not have been uppermost in the minds of these chemists as they performed their assigned tasks to ensure the daily smooth operation of refining sugarcane at BC Sugar.

Over the course of the next couple of years the textual records, photographs, moving image materials, architectural drawings, and other materials in the BC Sugar fonds will be preserved, arranged, described and made available to researchers. We look forward to providing access to and sharing more stories and highlights from this exciting fonds.

On Monday, April 15, the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum suffered a fire. It was quickly managed and extinguished by first responders from the Boston Fire Department and the Boston Police Department. My sincere thanks go to them for their extraordinary efforts. I am grateful that no one was injured.

This fire occurred around the same time as the awful attack in Copley Plaza during the Boston Marathon. Our hearts go out to the victims of that terrible, terrible event. I have close ties to Boston. I have run that marathon with those people in the past and have had friends and relatives cheering for me at that finish line.  I found this incident to be particularly sad and troubling.

The Boston Police Department is investigating the cause of the fire and initial indications are that it was not connected to the bombings at the Boston Marathon.  Please remember the people affected by the tragedy in Boston on Monday, and wish for their resilience and for their healing.

Today, the work of the American people continues in Boston, and my heartfelt congratulations go out to the people who have been working hard to develop the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA), which is launching online today.  Unfortunately, Monday’s tragedy occurred at the very steps of where the official gala launch was planned to be held, the Boston Public Library.… [ Read all ]

In celebration of National Library Week, a few photos from UNCG’s old Carnegie Library (now Forney Building) that were recently removed from a scrapbook, repaired by the library’s preservation team, and digitized for an upcoming project.

Circa 1936

Recreational reading room, April, 1938

Books arriving for a library contest, April, 1938

The Carnegie Library scrapbook and photos will be available online in a few months as part of two larger projects presenting historical photographs of UNCG and scrapbooks held in the Martha Blakeney Hodges Special Collections and University Archives.

One evening recently, while I was reading Little House in the Big Woods to my six year old, he asked what a catechism is (I believe some small children had just been forced to spend all Sunday reading one). I realized that I didn’t quite know. Our friend the internet quickly clarified that catechisms are books explaining core doctrine in question and answer format, generally religious and intended to be memorized.

Things might have stopped there, except that the next day, while immersed in some nineteenth century book at the bunker, I ran across Talcott Williams’ (class of 1873) catechism and got curious about this genre that was once so ubiquitous.

Talcott Williams’ catechism

The earliest catechism we have in the archives is a 1623 Heidelberg catechism in Latin:

Next, a Westminster catechism from 1658, eleven years after it was first published. The Westminster catechism was written in both long and short form, for the more and less sophisticated religious student.

Note how the Westminster catechism was recommended “for the benefit of Masters of Families”. This Protestant catechism (and Amherst College, being the institution that it was, has no Catholic catechisms) was intended for household use; for the “Master” of the family to use in the instruction of his children and servants.

Tellingly, the majority of the eighteenth century book that turn up in our catalog when you search for catechisms are lectures, sermons or other explications of catechisms – apparently even the masters were somewhat perplexed.

In the nineteenth century, the balance of our holdings shifts to simplified catechisms intended for use directly by children, the earliest ones included in the various editions of the New England Primer.

New England Primer 1836

New England Primer 1822

Milk for Babes, or, a Catechism in Verse 1840

Watt’s Plain and Easy Catechism for Children 1820

What particularly fascinates me are all the secular catechisms in our collection, from botany to anti-slavery to political economy (plus one Buddhist catechism for good measure), these show the familiarity and fondness that people felt for catechism as an instructional genre in the nineteenth century.

Botanical Catechism 1819

Anti-Slavery Catechism 1839

Catechism of Political Economy 1817

A Buddhist Catechism by Henry S. Olcott 1881 – a very interesting example of a westerner reaching first for a familiar tool… and not necessarily the best suited one.

And last, my most favorite, Noah Webster’s 1798 Little Reader’s Assistant, which includes both a Federal Catechism and a Farmer’s Catechizm! To quote from the latter: “Q. Why is agriculture the most agreeable employment? A. Because it brings the fewest cares, with the greatest certainty of food and clothing…”

Little Reader’s Assistant 1798

Additional images can be found on our flickr site

Aerial View of Detroit, MI c.1978

Pick up the Can Instead of Kicking the Can….

With hidden storage areas, dusty inventories, and an accepted and resounding belief that backlogs are the reality and norm. Every profession carries with it a certain degree of accepted truths and archives are no exception. How many of us can honestly admit that we have unprocessed collections buried deep within our vaults for more than five, ten, or more years? This is not only a paralyzing opinion of archives but as professionals and the processes that we value as collective truth.

High level processing and cataloging is not a new idea nor is it a particularly revolutionary one. Being our greatest enemies, we as a profession, get bogged down in the details and wade in the weeds, where sacrificing efficiency for item level description clogs the workflow in both traditional and digital archival processing worlds. With the onset of cloud based technology and keyword searches helps to redefine traditional taxonomy structures. No longer saddled by hierarchical naming conventions, this brand of accessibility improves to reduce false hits and allows the user to decide the true value of a search. This approach allows both the archivist along with the user to decide the value of content for their purposes which supports a quicker flow of content through the pipeline.

Gather your resources to get behind a project with a project management perspective with a single minded goal, with intention, to complete it in a timely manner. Be a closer by mapping out the entire project, make key decisions up front and then send the troops in to execute the actions. Create and scope timelines, action lists matched with responsible stakeholders, and assessment tools to minimize the impact of inevitable learning curves, technology failures, funding issues, and processing adjustments. Condensing processing time will also create consistency in searchable tools like numbering systems, naming, and general organization of an entire archive. Optimizing resources with a solid roadmap maximizes success will support a shift in addressing our backlogs head on instead of stacking them in the closets to collect dust for the next generation of archivists to sort out.

This month the Filmoteka Narodowa (National Film Archives of Poland) is screening a season of Lindsay Anderson’s films in Warsaw. Anderson would no doubt have been delighted with this recognition for his work as he had a great affection for Poland and visited the country on many occasions. Evidence of Anderson’s Polish connections are scattered through his archive with diary entries and photographs providing a personal record of his visits to Warsaw (a search of our online catalogue will provide a full list of material relating to Poland in the collection).

Photograph of Warsaw taken by Anderson in 1966.

Anderson worked as both a theatre and film director in Warsaw in the 1960s and the archive includes material relating to his Polish projects. In 1966 he directed a production of John Osborne’s play Inadmissible Evidence at the Contemporary Theatre in Warsaw starring Tadeusz Lomnicki. Anderson kept a detailed photographic record of the production and the collection also includes theatre programmes and posters and cuttings from the Polish press relating to the play.

Anderson returned to Warsaw in 1967 to direct a short documentary film, The Singing Lesson, at the invitation of the Warsaw Documentary Studio. The film featured a class of students from the Warsaw Dramatic Academy performing traditional Polish songs inter-cut with scenes of Warsaw life. Anderson’s initial outline for the film (in both English and Polish) is present, along with correspondence, photographs and promotional material.

A scene from The Singing Lesson, a film made by Lindsay Anderson in Warsaw in 1967.

Amongst the thousands of pieces of correspondence in the archive one of Anderson’s most cherished items was a letter written by the Polish director Andrez Wajda in December 1983. The letter was written by Wajda after seeing Britannia Hospital, Anderson’s blistering satire set in the chaotic surroundings of a dysfunctional British hospital. Panned by the critics and ignored by the cinema-going public on its release in the UK in 1982 Wajda’s warm praise for the film was much appreciated by Anderson, Wajda writing:

“I very much wanted to write to you. I saw Britannia Hospital in Paris. It is the most Polish film produced anywhere in the world in recent years. Being Polish, I completely understand the way you are using the facts of contemporary life and putting them on the screen. This is really Britain – the only one that truly exists. And it is also Polish through and through, amazing in its ideas…

As in every Polish masterpiece, there is twice as much material in it as there ought to be. It’s as if you were anticipating censorship and counting on it to shape your film by cutting it. Perhaps it’s a pity you’ve no censorship in England. Though really your film would be quite uncensorable: they’d just have to write the whole thing off as a loss – as we say over here. Quite simply the film is superb, and I wholeheartedly congratulate you for it.” (ref. LA 1/9/3/16/62)

Cover of Film Vilag, a Hungarian film magazine, featuring a promotional image for Britannia Hospital (June 1983).

Tally Ho, The Florida State University, 1967

Florida State

both a university and a place in the sun

an invitation both to learn and to feel

and above all an education

an exercise of the mind and body

the spirit seeking knowledge in the fountain of life.

–Tally Ho, 1967, page 4

During World War II, rationing became not only accepted, but a symbol of patriotism for most Americans. Listen to Oscar Brand in this never-broadcast documentary on how the government —and WNYC— helped foster that sentiment.

Using archival footage, the documentary takes us on a short trip through the rationale, promotion, and consequences of rationing, including the dark side it helped create with the appearance of black markets. Within WNYC, Mayor La Guardia offered frequent reminders in his weekly address, there were regular programs dealing with the issue, and various admonitions were often broadcast. All in all, despite the general absence of true privations for the overall U.S. population, there is no question that rationing fostered a sense of solidarity at home and abroad.

I must admit to a slightly macabre inclination in my travels. A recent visit to the Wilder Brain Collection in the department of Psychology at Cornell University brought me face-to-face with this:

This is the celebrated brain of the notorious murderer and philologist Edward Rulloff (1819-1871). Celebrated why? For weighing in at 1,770 grams, making it one of the largest such specimens ever recorded. It is, in fact, approximately 30% larger and heavier than the average male brain. This datum may be helpful for our understanding of Rulloff’s aberrant and tragic life; or, it may not. To be sure, (pseudo-)scientific theories of the late 19th century saw a connection; phrenology, for instance (a frequent subject of our blog: here and here) would have had much to say about the relative prominence of the various “organs” of Rulloff’s brain.

Edward H. Rulloff (1819-1871)

But more about Rulloff before we get carried away. He was a man of undoubted intellectual brilliance, but also (and just as undoubtedly) a serial criminal who would be judged to be insane in any court of law today. Born in New Brunswick, Canada, he found work as a law clerk and intensely studied the law, but when he was convicted of a series of robberies he spent two years in prison. Upon release, he relocated to Tompkins County, New York, finding work as a teacher. In June 1845, his wife and infant daughter disappeared, and though Rulloff was widely suspected of their murder, no bodies were ever found, and he was convicted only of the crime of abduction, for which he spent ten years in Auburn (N.Y.) State Prison.

Shortly after release in 1856, Rulloff was again tried for the crime of abduction, this time for his infant daughter. Escaping from Tompkins County Jail, he spent a few years on the run from the law. He also began to engage feverishly with his supreme intellectual fixation: the development of a universal “method” of language which, he claimed, would provide the key to its origins. (Rulloff, though he had very little formal schooling, claimed to have mastery of Latin, Greek, German, French, and Italian, as well as a smattering of Hebrew and Sanskrit.)

In 1859 Rulloff was captured and brought back to Ithaca, N.Y., but his conviction was overturned and he went free. Throughout the 1860s he lived in New York City and continued to work on his supposed magnum opus, which was entitled “Method of the Formation of Language.” He supported himself with accomplices in periodic crime sprees throughout the state. Failing to get his scholarly work published (or even understood by philologists of the time), Rulloff sought to publish it himself with money acquired through his various crimes. But in 1870 he was involved in the robbery of a dry goods store in Binghamton, N.Y., in which a clerk was killed, another injured, and his two accomplices drowned in the river. Rulloff was charged with their murder and convicted. His trial and execution received sensational treatment in newspapers all over the country. Rulloff was hanged in Binghamton on May 18, 1871. His was the last hanging in New York State.

As I got reacquainted with Rulloff while standing in front of his milky-colored, car battery-sized brain swimming in a jar of formalin at Cornell, I recalled our own tie-in to his colorful story: in the Julius Hawley Seelye Papers in Archives & Special Collections, a series of letters Rulloff had sent to Seelye, dating from 1857 until just one day before his execution in 1871. Ten letters in all, plus assorted news clippings that Seelye collected at the end.

Professor Julius H. Seelye (AC 1849), professor of Mental and Moral Philosophy, Amherst College, 1858-1890

Julius Hawley Seelye (1824-1895) probably first met Edward Rulloff when he was a young seminarian at Auburn Theological Seminary at the same time Rulloff was serving his prison sentence in the same town. However, the first letter we find from Rulloff to Seelye in the Seelye papers dates from somewhat later, 1857, when Seelye was then serving as a pastor of a church in Schenectady, N.Y. Rulloff, writing from Ithaca, wrote in answer to a letter that Seelye had written earlier, apparently expressing Christian solicitude and inquiring about his moral philosophy. Rulloff’s reply mainly said he would get back to him later. (It is fun to speculate that this letter may have been written around the same time he was plotting his escape from jail.)

Rulloff letter to Seelye, Feb. 14, 1857

In Rulloff’s  second letter of to Seelye, written 18 months later (PDF), he  lays out frankly his starkly atheistic conception of the universe: 

To me, so far as I can discover the agencies by which events are controled [sic], the universe around me has become a system governed by physical causes alone, operating with blind and indiscriminate constancy whether for good or for ill, as these words are commonly employed. […]

I see no signs or certainty of any great moral or intellectual purpose to be ultimately worked out by the present order of things. […]

The tendrils of affection, rudely bruised and repressed, have almost ceased to shoot and twine themselves around objects of ordinary attachment. And I live along, bearing the burden of existence, with almost passionless indifference.

As you can see from these samples, Rulloff’s writing style was grammatically precise, complex and florid — even at times poetic. But reading his philosophical disputations is like being trapped on a bus next to a slightly eccentric but charming older gentleman who  lectures to you eloquently for minutes on end until you realize that nothing he has just said made any sense to you.

In the last three months of his life, Rulloff wrote six letters to Seelye.  His murder trial was then approaching what looked to be an inevitable conclusion. In these final days, two things preoccupied Rulloff: preserving his “method” on the origins of language for generations to come, and convincing the court that his scholarly research was so valuable as to make his execution impossible to justify. Naturally, it would be necessary to win over academics like Seelye, a professor of Mental and Moral Philosophy at an esteemed New England college, so that he might be moved to step forward as an impassioned advocate for clemency. It was an outlandish defense, the product of a thoroughly delusional mind.  If Rulloff ever did possess any well-developed manuscript of his “Method of the Formation of Language,” it has not survived. But in an attempt to preserve his thoughts, his last letters to Seelye mostly comprised lengthy outlines of his etymological theories, typically running to over twelve neatly handwritten pages. Here are two samples:

Rulloff to Seelye, April 7, 1871

Rulloff to Seelye, April 7, 1871

Rulloff urging Seelye to preserve his method as sketched out in his letter.

It’s unfortunate that we don’t have Seelye’s side of the correspondence, to find out what he made of poor Rulloff and his philological theories. In the last letter (PDF) Seelye received, written the day before Rulloff’s execution, he lashed out at the injustice of his situation and the blindness of those who condemn him:

Rulloff to Seelye, May 17, 1871

In the whole history of the human race no more instance of blind and stupid malignity can any where be shown than that which closes its eyes to the value of my discovery, and denies the time necessary to place it in available form. No more striking instance of gross and utter disregard towards one whose labors have resulted in a great and permanent blessing to the whole civilized world. 

Such is my discovery and time will show it.

Defiant to the last, Rulloff was executed the next day; and also, apparently, was his “Method on the Formation of Language.” Excepting, that is, for the abstruse scribblings preserved in his letters to Seelye, here at Amherst. And — just maybe? — also locked inside that massive brain on display in a jar at Cornell’s Wilder Brain Collection…

It is April 19th, 1944. Thousands of mourners silently march from a service at the Warsaw synagogue on Rivington Street to City Hall.  A few carry signs: “Save Those Jews in Poland Who Can Yet Be Saved!” and, “Three Million Polish Jews Have Been Murdered By the Nazis!”  When they arrive at the steps of City Hall, Cantor Moishe Oysher sings El Mole Rachamim, a funeral prayer for the the 40,000 Jews who died a year earlier in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising.

The Chief Rabbi of Vilna and former Polish Senator, Isaac Rubinstein tells the crowd of mourners and those listening over WNYC, “A year ago, the remnant of what had been the greatest Jewish community in Europe decided to offer armed resistance to the brutal German murderers.”

Warsaw, the capitol of Poland, had been the home of nearly half a million Jews, about one third of its residents. When the Germans invaded Poland in September, 1939 and occupied Warsaw, they forced all Jews into a crowded ghetto. Eight-foot-high walls topped with broken glass and barbed wire closed off the inhabitants. Within a few years, starvation and deportations to slave labor and concentration camps reduced the number of Jews in Warsaw by more than ninety percent. After meeting with unexpected resistance from ghetto fighters, on the eve of Passover 1943, the Nazis attacked. Rabbi Rubinstein said, “Against heavy odds, they resolved to fight. Not in defense of their lives, for there was no chance to win the battle.  It was harder to save the dignity of their people and to wake the conscience of humanity.”

Jews in the Ghetto fought the Nazis with home-made bombs made with broken light bulbs and nails. In a 1993 interview partisan and survivor Vladka Mead said, “My assignment was to try to obtain, in any possible way, arms for the fighters’ organizations… buying dynamite.. smuggling out all kinds of jewelry and selling it to buy the things that were necessary for the primitive factories making Molotov cocktails.”[1] Senator Rubenstein put it this way, “For 42 days and nights, all the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto — men, women and children, old and young, fought almost with naked fists.”The Nazis systematically burned or blew up the ghetto block by block, building by building. Within a month and a half the entire ghetto was razed to the ground.

The 1944 gathering at City Hall Park was not only a memorial for the dead but also a call to action for those still alive.  The war was not over and the death camps were still in full operation. Dr. Joseph Thon, head of the General Zionist Organization of Poland and former Editor of the Polish daily Chwila of Lwow, pleaded for support.  “Mr. Mayor, at this moment we stand before you as mourners and with hearts full of pain.  In our desperation we ask your voice to be heard…Mr. Mayor, help us bring our message to places where the fate of our surviving brothers and sisters may be decided.  Help us save them! Chaim Yisrael Chai! The folk of Israel will live forever!”

From his chair on the podium, Mayor La Guardia may have heard these cries for help more acutely than the crowd knew.  Mayor La Guardia’s mother was Jewish, and his biographer Thomas Kessner writes that, “although La Guardia did not think of himself as a Jew, his estranged sister was in Europe and he was aware that she had been taken away by the Nazis.”[2] The Mayor calls the event “one of the most impressive ceremonies that has ever taken place at this historic spot…”Every man and woman here assembled is mourning the death of some dear one who was brutally and cruelly murdered by the armed forces of the Nazi government.”

Warsaw Ghetto photo from Jürgen Stroop Report to Heinrich Himmler, May 1943. The original German caption reads: “Forcibly pulled out of dug-outs”. (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum via Wikimedia Commons)

Confirmed reports about the extermination camps had reached the public as early as November 1942. CBS correspondent Edward R. Murrow read this copy over the air only a month later. “What is happening is this: Millions of human beings, most of them Jews, are being gathered up with ruthless efficiency and murdered… Since the middle of July, these deportations from the Warsaw ghetto have been going on.  Those who survived the journey were dumped out at one of three camps, where they were killed. The Jews are being systematically exterminated throughout all Poland… The phrase ‘concentration camps’ is obsolete, as out of date as ‘economic sanctions’ or ‘non-recognition.’  It is now possible to speak only of extermination camps.”[3]

Mayor La Guardia told his audience of survivors and mourners their voices would be heard. “The American people understand the plight of the people of Jewish faith in Europe.  The need to go to their rescue is high on the list of the military actions that are to take place before long.”

Although the Mayor was optimistic, little changed. On the home front, U.S. immigration laws were so zealously enforced that even official quotas for Jews were not filled. Many who were turned away were sent to concentration camps. Long after the war ended, crowds continued to attend memorials in the hopes of finding friends and family they had lost.

It was a day of tributes and remembrance in New York City. In addition to City Hall, the Jewish partisans of Warsaw were also celebrated at a mass meeting at Carnegie Hall, and around the city (except war plants) by Jewish workers who stopped what they there doing for a two-minute silent prayer at 11 a.m. followed by eight minutes recalling the actions of those resisting the Nazis.[4]

[5]

From the Perspective of the Forverts

by Chana Pollack

On the steps of City Hall April 19, 1944: Dr. Joseph Thon, who is speaking into the WNYC microphones as Mayor La Guardia listens. To the right of Dr. Thon is M.I. Nurenberger, Editor of the Canadian Jewish News, to his right is Senator Rabbi Isaac Rubinstein, former Chief Rabbi of Vilnius and Polish Senator Behind Nurenberger is Cantor and Yiddish Theatre/Film Actor Moyshe Osher. Diagonally behind La Guardia is Yiddish writer Sholem Asch and next to him is Polish Jewish poet Julian Tuwim. 

(Forward Association Archives)

On April 20, 1944 the Forverts edition ran 8 pages for your four cents. As might be expected, headlines followed the war abroad —6,500 airplanes were having an acute effect—Sebastopol was burning and there were counterattacks in Galicia.

Beneath the banner headline, in smaller print, but still bolded, was news from closer to home—hundreds of thousands of New York’s Jews honored Polish Jewish heroes and martyrs—keening in the Warsaw Synagogue and on the streets.

Though aimed at describing the scene on New York’s Rivington Street where the memorial demonstration began at the Warsaw Synagogue, the Forverts delivered uplifting news of spontaneous uprisings in ghettos of leading Eastern European cities such as Vilnius, Bialystok, Lodz, Lemberg/Lwow and additional sites throughout Poland, doubtless inspired by the Warsaw ghetto uprising one year prior.

The Forverts remarked that folks had already gathered hours before this image featuring prominent figures addressing the memorial on a WNYC mic was even taken. The synagogue, they reported, was beyond capacity with over 2,500 people. 10,000 more were estimated to be standing out there attempting to gain access to the synagogue’s interior, in order to honor the Warsaw ghetto heroes.

Far from detailing the celebrated camera ready folks seen alongside his honor, Mayor La Guardia, Forverts reporters wrote viscerally of the neighborhood chronicling scenes inside the synagogue—on the street before it and in shops and factories across the city. The energy of which propelled the historic march to City Hall.

Inside the Warsaw Synagogue the Watenberg family sat with their two recently rescued daughters having had the fortune to arrive to New York City on the ‘Gripsholm’ ship straight from Nazi occupied Europe. The significance of the occasion wasn’t lost on the working folk gathered on the sidewalks of the Lower East Side pressing to be a part of it. From beyond the barricades, the Forverts recalled the sounds of unrestrained weeping never before heard both inside and outside the locale.

At 11 a.m. when the speeches ceased the entire gathering bowed their heads for two minutes of silence, and the Forverts recorded faces inscribed with a deep grief. And those were the faces chosen for the front page diptych to underscore the headlines. New York’s finest (Gentile) policemen were said to have been similarly affected and stood wiping their tear filled eyes.

Acclaimed Yiddish theatre composer Joseph Rumshinsky accompanied everyone’s darling Cantor Moyshe Osher on a pump organ as the El Mole Rakhomim [Lord Full Of Mercy] prayer was intoned for the dead. A member of the crowd rose up and spontaneously recited the Kadish [Mourner’s Prayer]—and again, the entire crowd irrupted in tears.

Before leaving Rivington Street a slight challenge could be heard from the crowd, when controversial Yiddish writer Sholem Asch attempted to speak of faith. Known for his Christological novels, and a rumored conversion, those gathered were seemingly unsettled by Asch’s declaration that God will avenge the Jewish blood spilt. Individuals in the crowd challenged Asch demanding he tell them where god’s son was currently? Was he also going to help them? Who invited him here?— was heard from the audience. Though immortalized in the event’s official photographs, standing next to Julian Tuwim, Poland’s Jewish poet of great renown, organizers later clarified to the Forverts that nobody had in fact invited him.

The entire gathering then formed a long impressive entourage making its way to City Hall. Thousands of Jews en masse walked the streets silently with heads cast down in anguish. At the head of the demonstration was the Watenberg family carrying an American flag.

Placards were carried saying The Ghetto Heroes Blood Cries Out For Revenge! and Three Million Jews Murdered By Nazis—Help Save The Surviving Ones! Thousands stood on the sidewalks watching the Jewish demonstration pass. They could be seen, the Forverts wrote, asking each other about it and listening to explanations.

Despite being unable to attend the march due to work constraints, 4000 shops participated in a work stoppage that day, and an estimated half a million workers honored the memory of their fallen brethren. The Forverts reported that cloakmakers and dressmakers, furriers and tailors, grocery clerks and painters, pocketbook makers, millinery workers and workers in dozens of other fields stopped the wheels of production for 10 minutes as a memorial to those heroic individuals who with their bare hands, led an uprising against the Nazi murder machine.

By evening, thousands attended a concluding memorial event at Carnegie Hall People in the trades, and shops came straight from work to honor the martyrs of the Polish ghetto expressing their desperation at saving what remained of European Jewry. Also not seen in the officially recorded image at City Hall, was Yiddish poet H. Leyvik who that night, read a piece created especially in memory of the heroic uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto.

When listening to the WNYC recording of the day’s events, one easily absorbs the depth of New York’s willingness to acknowledge the unique historic significance of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Reading the Forverts’s accounts of the crowd’s participation helps turn the camera around to observe the people participating in history as they created it. By 1947, only three years after the war, their unflagging energy led to the formation of a memorial plaque at Riverside Drive and 83rd Street.

On October 19^th of that year, the Forverts was still 8 pages but had gone up a penny in price and cost you five cents. More than 15,000 people attended the unveiling lasting over three hours in the pouring rain. The Forverts reported it as one of the most extraordinary Jewish ceremonies New York had ever witnessed.

Mayor O’Dwyer was in attendance as were Senator Robert Wagner and several European ambassadors. Cardinal Spellman sent a representative and Manhattan’s Borough President was there too. Cantor Moyshe Osher sang the national anthem while Cantor Moshe Koussevitzky, himself a recent refugee from Warsaw, sang the El Mole Rakhomim prayer. No photos accompany the reporting of that day.

____

[1] Mead, Vladka interview conducted by Andy Lanset, March 15, 1993.

[2] Kessner, Thomas, Fiorello H. La Guardia and the Making of Modern New York, McGraw-Hill, 1989, pg. 525.

[3] Murrow, Edward R., In Search of Light: The Broadcasts of Edward R. Murrow, 1938-1961, Knopf, 1967, pg. 56.

[4] “Jews Here Acclaim Heroes of Warsaw,” The New York Times, April 20, 1944, pg. 10.

[5] This feature piece was originally broadcast on WNYC, April 19, 2001.

Congratulations to OldWeather.org for winning the 2012 IBM Award for Meteorological Innovation that Matters. Stay tuned for more information soon about PPL logbooks on the site.