#DONATE US HOLOCAUST MUSEUM PROFESSIONAL#

'That sounds like a good plan,' said von Halle, whose blog containing family photos and some of the story is at. And they're beautiful photographs, but it's even more beautiful to know who they are. Which sounds like a lot of work, but if you don't do it, we can't have a catalog record.

Once we digitize the photographs, even though you've written on many of them, I'm going to send you Xerox copies, and I want you to circle everyone you know and write down who it is. When it gets to me I will keep it in your sort of organized fashion. 'OK,' she said, 'it has to live in your parents' house for a few weeks. Jeremy von Halle spoke of his anxiety at having the documents in his possession, including having them with him on the train that morning. This is my second donor today where somebody actually sat down and tried to organize things.') Part of the relationship we create is to make sure you're involved.' (Earlier, Snyder had said, 'Wow, this is really impressive. Jeremy's father Robert von Halle, an options trader, had a question: 'Somehow we're going to get all this stuff to Washington, donate it, and then you guys are going to go through and figure out what all this is?' 'For a lot of historians, this is primary source material,' Snyder explained. The documents will be stored according to the best modern conservation methods, and they will be digitized for easy access at a remove.

#DONATE US HOLOCAUST MUSEUM PROFESSIONAL#

The donation the von Halle family is preparing to make will travel east via a professional art handling service, the stuff of everyday life elevated to the status of fine art. It's all important because every collection illustrates a different story.' The museum wants documents relating to all survivors, which it defines as those who lived under Nazi occupation, she said, whether or not they are Jewish recently there's been a 'big push for Polish non-Jews, Polish Roman Catholics, to come forward,' said Snyder.Īnd if people know their relatives have materials they aren't ready to donate, she urged them to talk to the relatives about their experiences, to record the conversations following guidelines posted on the museum's website and at 'It's all important,' said Snyder. But every generation after the original generation knows less, and can't answer questions. He's a great third-generation person to go back to. He really wants to know about his family history. If you receive a collection from survivors, they can tell you the significance of everything. … You really want to deal with survivors because they have the answers to everything. Yet even though what they seek are historical documents, she is in a race against time, she said: 'It's urgent. A colleague who just returned from two weeks in Israel typically comes back with more than two dozen such collections, she said, and people now know to seek out the museum. 'We get a private collection a day, some 400 a year from private individuals,' said Suzy Snyder, the museum curator who had traveled from Washington to meet with the von Halles and others in Chicago and was headed next to California for the same reason. The museum's annual benefit luncheon in Chicago takes place Wednesday at the Sheraton Grand (more information at or call the museum's Midwest office at 84). The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has been taking in materials that help tell the story of the Holocaust for decades and with enough diligence that it is about to open a big new archives facility in suburban Washington built to handle its burgeoning collection and make it more accessible to the public.

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