Resources

Museums & Archives

While working on Eva and Eve, I was fortunate to work with historians at a number of institutions in the United States and Europe. I did the last of my “on the road” research in 2019, before the pandemic changed our world and ability to travel freely. All these archives have excellent online materials for anyone working on a project related to Jewish history.

Leo Baeck Institute, New York City

This archive devoted to the study of German-speaking Jewry was my first point of contact. LBI is part of the Center for Jewish History which comprises several archives. The archive is tucked away on 16th Street in Manhattan; I must have walked by the building hundreds of times on my wanderings in Chelsea without realizing how important this place would become for me. For now, the archive is closed to the public but there are many online events free to the public. LBI will host a book launch event for Eva and Eve and my book will be included as part of the book club program in the fall of 2021.
Visit the website.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C.

I worked with an archivist at the museum to locate a document that should have been at the Jewish Community Center in Vienna. At a later time, I traveled to Washington DC for an in-depth visit. I urge everyone, Jewish or not, to make a trip to this extraordinary collection. If your family was caught up in the events of the Shoah, you will find resources here and dedicated archivists to assist you.
Visit the website.

Jewish Museum, New York City

This museum features collections, special exhibitions, and cultural events of all sorts including online concerts during this Covid era. January 2021 exhibitions will feature the art of Chagall, Soutine, and Modigliani.
Visit the website.

Museum of Jewish Heritage, A Living Memorial to the Holocaust, New York City

From the current exhibition on the Auschwitz concentration camp aptly titled Not long ago. Not far away to films and concerts, and a welcoming café, this center brings Jewish culture and history together. Jack Kliger, President and CEO of the museum published this relevant article about the need to fight against Holocaust denial, still a force of disinformation on social media.
Visit the website.

Neue Gallerie, New York City

When I need an art fix of Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele and delicious Viennese treats, I head to this exquisite museum on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. The permanent collection features Klimt’s famous portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer, subject of Anne-Marie O’Connor’s book The Lady in Gold and the feature film starring Helen Mirren. Once the pride of Austria’s Belvedere Palace, Adele’s face appeared on postage stamps, even as Austria denied its responsibility for the fate of its Jewish population. For some time/space travel to the golden age of Vienna in the early 20th Century when Klimt and Schiele worked their artistic magic, I love to eat lunch in one of the two restaurants.
Visit the website.

Jewish Museum, Vienna

While in Vienna in 2019, I toured the permanent collection with one of the museum’s excellent guides. During this Covid time, you can still explore the museum’s collections online and if you need assistance with research there are dedicated historians. The museum shop has an especially inspiring collection of crafts. The museum focus is on the vibrancy of Jewish culture and I found my trip here comforting and heart-opening.
Visit the website.

Jewish Community Center (IKG), Vienna

If your family, like mine, has its origins in Vienna and you are hunting for information about your ancestors, this should be your first stop. The beautifully preserved central synagogue, the only temple to survive the pogrom of November 9-10, 1938, is located around the corner.
Visit the website.

Jewish Community, Trieste

The Jewish Community of this port city on Italy’s Adriatic coast comprises a museum, synagogue, the historic arrest and deportation site La Risiera, and Jewish Cemetery. When we are able to travel again, I highly recommend a trip to the Jewish Museum, whose collection charts the rise of the Jewish community and its near destruction in 1943. Until mid 1940, Trieste was one of the ways out of Nazi-occupied Europe, and the route my mother’s family took to New York.
Visit the website.

ItalianLiners.com

During my research and writing I discovered this unique collection devoted to the great Italian ships including the Saturnia, the boat that carried my mother and her parents to safety in 1940. Wealthy people luxuriated in the first class cabins, lounges, and ballrooms. Most of the passengers traveled in lower cases including many thousands of immigrants who left Europe for America. If you too are obsessed with 1920s and 1930s era posters, you will find happiness here.
Visit the website.

The Wiener Holocaust Library, London

Devoted to the preservation of resources related to the Holocaust, this institution has an unparalleled collection of historical documents, including first-person accounts of life during the Nazi occupation of Vienna I read while researching Eva and Eve.
Visit the website.

Authors

  • Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism
  • Elisabeth Asbrink, 1947
  • Marco Bencich, various articles in Italian
  • Sarah Churchwell, Behold, America
  • George Clare, Last Waltz in Vienna
  • Tim Corbett, “‘Once the Only True Austrians:’ Mobilising Jewish Memory of the First World War for Belonging in the New Austrian Nation”
  • Edmund de Waal, The Hare with Amber Eyes
  • Maurizio Eliseo, Saturnia and Vulcania
  • Victor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning
  • Peter Hall, Cities in Civilization
  • Brigitte Hamann, Hitler’s Vienna
  • Steve Hochstadt, Exodus to Shanghai: Stories of Escape from the Third Reich
  • Klaus Hödl, various articles
  • Georgia Hunter, We Were the Lucky Ones
  • Trudi Kantor, Some Girls, Some Hats, and Hitler
  • John F. Kennedy, A Nation of Immigrants
  • Nora Krug, Belonging
  • Lucette Lagnado, The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit: A Jewish Family’s Exodus from Old Cairo to the New World
  • Gerald Lamprecht, various articles
  • Erika Lee, America for Americans: A History of Xenophobia in the United States
  • Debbie Levy, The Year of Goodbyes
  • Valeria Luiselli, Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions
  • Daniel Mendelsohn, The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million
  • Jan Morris, Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere
  • Frederic Morton, Thunder at Twilight: Vienna 1913/1914
  • Daniel Okrent, The Guarded Gate: Bigotry, Eugenics, and the Law That Kept Two Generations of Jews, Italians, and Other European Immigrants Out of America
  • Doris Orgel, The Devil in Vienna
  • Iris Origo, A Chill in the Air: An Italian War Diary 1939-1940
  • Peter Olaf, Before the Fall: German and Austrian Art of the 1930s
  • Shachar M. Pinsker, A Rich Brew: How Cafés Created Modern Jewish Culture
  • George Prochnik, The Impossible Exile: Stefan Zweig at the End of the World
  • Doron Rabinovici, Eichmann’s Jews
  • Michaela Raggam-Blesch, “The Anschluss Pogrom in Vienna”
  • R.D. Rosen, Such Good Girls: The Journey of the Holocaust’s Hidden Child Survivors
  • Elizabeth Rosner, Survivor Cafe: The Legacy of Trauma and the Labyrinth of Memory
  • Joseph Roth, The Radetsky March
  • Philippe Sands, East West Street: On the Origins of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity
  • Anna Seghers, Transit
  • Lisa Silverman, Becoming Austrians: Jews and Culture Between the World Wars
  • Timothy Snyder, Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning
  • Jason Stanley, How Fascism Works
  • Friedrich Torberg, Tante Jolesch or the Decline of the West in Anecdotes
  • Bart Van Es, The Cut Out Girl: A Story of War and Family
  • Gregor von Rezzori, Memoirs of an Anti-Semite
  • Éric Vuillard, The Order of the Day
  • Thomas Weyr, The Setting of the Pearl: Vienna Under Hitler
  • Elie Wiesel, A Passover Haggadah
  • Sarah Wildman, Paper Love: Searching for the Girl My Grandfather Left Behind
  • Stefan Zweig, Collected Stories, Messages from a Lost World, The World of Yesterday

Photographer

Shannon Greer is the talented Hudson-based photographer who took my portrait on a breezy Day in March 2019, before Covid or any of the other challenges we all experienced in 2020. An experienced fashion and lifestyle photographer, he has the gift of making his subjects feel at ease, especially important for a person like me, who has never much enjoyed photo sessions. 

Scroll to Top