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The University of Southampton
Special Collections

Introduction to the Anglo-Jewish archives

The Division has more than 850 collections of manuscripts of Anglo-Jewish archives. This makes Southampton an important centre in Western Europe for the study of Anglo-Jewish history in the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries and for the relations between Jews and non-Jewish worlds. The Anglo-Jewish Archives contain important holdings for prominent individuals and national organisations.

David Q. Henriques in costume
David Q. Henriques in costume

Jewish individuals

Papers of individuals include those of Cecil Roth (MS 156), of Sir Basil Henriques (MS 307) and of others within the Henriques family (MS 132), of Sir Robert Waley Cohen (MS 363), of Selig Brodetsky (MS 119) and of the poet and psychotherapist Eugene Heimler (MS 220), private papers of Chief Rabbi Joseph Hertz (MS 175) and of Chief Rabbi Sir Israel Brodie (MS 206), Neville and Harold Laski and their parents (MS 134), private and official papers of Rabbi Solomon Schonfeld (MS 183), which contain a large section relating to the work of the Chief Rabbi’s Religious Emergency Council and the rescue of members of the Jewish community in the 1930s and 1940s, and correspondence between Mrs Joseph and her sister Lady Samuels (MS 335).

Jewish organisations

Archives of organisations include those of the Jewish Board of Guardians (MS 173), the Anglo-Jewish Association (MS 137), the editorial correspondence of the Jewish Chronicle newspaper (MS 225), the Union of Jewish Women (MS 129), the World Union of Progressive Judaism (MS 285) and the Institute of Jewish Affairs (MSS 237-41) and the British Section of the World Jewish Congress (MS 238).

Inter-faith collections

The archive of Dr James Parkes (MS 60) focuses on his life’s work of the promotion of understanding between Jews and non-Jews; this complements the printed material of the Parkes Library. Related inter-faith collections include the archives of the International Association for Religious Freedom (MS 256), of the Council of Christians and Jews (MS 65), the World Congress of Faiths (MS 222), of Revd W.W.Simpson (MS 66), and material connected with the consideration of the Jewish question at the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle (MS 85).

Nuremberg transcripts

The Division also possess transcripts and related material for the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg (MS 200), together with a more substantial and relatively complete set of transcripts and related papers for the twelve subsequent US zonal trials at Nuremberg.

The Anglo-Jewish collections can be browsed and searched using the Special Collections Guide.

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