Estate of Benjamin Sagalowitz

Collection

Holding institution:: Archives of Contemporary History at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich

Holding institution (official language):: Archiv für Zeitgeschichte der ETH Zürich

Scope and content:: The collection contains biographical documents such as a biographical sketch, certificates, obituaries, passports, photos, etc. It also includes brochures, articles and speeches of Benjamin Sagalowitz as well as correspondence with Joel Brand, Nahum Goldmann, Simon Wiesenthal and others. It also contains documentation on the Eichmann Trial, a series of articles by Benjamin Sagalowitz from the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, collection of documents, press articles etc.

Archival history:: The collection was transferred to the Archives of Contemporary History (AfZ) between 1985 and 1999. The material was handed over to the AfZ by the SIG (Swiss Federation of Jewish Communities) and by Nina Zafran-Sagal, niece of Benjamin Sagalowitz. The documents relating to the Eichmann Trial were taken from the Avner W Less estate.

Further documents on the life and work of Benjamin Sagalowitz can be found in IB JUNA, IB SIG and on microfilms of the Yad Vashem Benjamin Sagalowitz P-13 collection in the AfZ. Additional documents are in the Benjamin Sagalowitz A 310 collection in the Central Zionist Archives, Jerusalem, Israel.

Administrative/biographical history:: Benjamin Sagalowitz, a journalist, was born in Vitebsk (Russia; now Belarus) on 3 June 1901 and died on 4 June 1970. After the pogroms in 1905, his Jewish family emigrated to Wiesbaden, Germany, but moved to Switzerland in 1914. In 1953, Sagalowitz was granted civil rights in Bern. He attended school and studied law in Zurich. Sagalowitz became editor of the ‘Jüdisches Heim’ and editorial assistant at the Jewish Press Centre and the ‘Israelitisches Wochenblatt’. He participated as a reporter in the trial against David Frankfurter in Chur in 1936. From 1938 to 1964, he was head of the ‘Jüdische Nachrichten’ (JUNA) and the press and documentation office of the Swiss Federation of Jewish Communities (SIG). In the summer of 1942, he transmitted the information received from Eduard Schulte about the beginning of the planned mass murder of the Jews in Nazi-dominated Europe to Gerhard M Riegner of the World Jewish Congress (WJC) in Geneva, who subsequently alerted the global public. From 1945, Sagalowitz reported on the Nuremberg Trials on behalf of the NZZ. He was a Swiss delegate to the Zionist Congress in Jerusalem 1960/61 and participated as a reporter in 1961/1962 at the Eichmann Trial in Jerusalem and 1963 to 1965 at the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial for the NZZ. During his life, he conducted extensive research on the Holocaust, which remained unpublished.

Author of the description:: Severin Holzknecht; Jewish Museum of Hohenems; 2020