Metadata: John Steinberg Collection
Collection
- Country:
- Switzerland
- 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
- Postal address:
- Hirschengraben 62, CH-8092 Zurich
- Phone number:
- +41 44 632 40 03
- Web address:
- https://www.afz.ethz.ch/
- Email:
- afz@history.gess.ethz.ch
- Reference number:
- E John Steinberg
- Title:
- John Steinberg Collection
- Title (official language):
- Sammlung John Steinberg
- Creator/accumulator:
- Steinberg, John
- Date(s):
- 1904/2007
- Language:
- German
- French
- English
- Italian
- Hungarian
- Polish
- Russian
- Hebrew
- Extent:
- 0.6 shelf metres
- Type of material:
- Textual material
- Physical condition:
- good
- Scope and content:
- This collection comprises envelopes and postcards from the internment camps in Switzerland during the Second World War.
- Archival history:
- The philatelic collection of John Steinberg was handed over to the AfZ (Archives of Contemporary History) by Walter Gut at the testamentary request of John Steinberg. Steinberg had been a frequent user at the AfZ since August 2001.
- Administrative/biographical history:
-
John Steinberg, a tax consultant and philatelist, was born in Cologne on 16 June 1922 and died in September 2007 in New York. His mother Diana, née Weil, was from Zurich, his father Julius Steinberg from Cologne. Steinberg spent the first years of his life in Cologne. In 1938, the family fled to Palestine and in 1939 Steinberg emigrated with his mother and sister to the USA. They entered the country with a tourist visa on the occasion of the World Exhibition in New York. In 1942, Steinberg joined the US army and was deployed in the Pacific. After he was discharged from the army in 1945 at the end of the war, he worked as a tax consultant in New York. He married Vera, née Atorff, from Germany in 1954.
Steinberg’s intensive and professional philatelic collecting activity lasted 35 years, especially after retirement. He owned one of the world's largest collections of postcards from the internment camps of the Second World War. In addition to the originals, the collection includes documents from his exhibitions and drafts of exhibitions. Place and time of the exhibitions could not be determined.
- Access points: locations:
- Switzerland
- Subject terms:
- Internment
- Finding aids:
- An online finding aid is available.
- Links to finding aids:
- http://onlinearchives.ethz.ch/
- Yerusha Network member:
- Jewish Museum Hohenems
- Author of the description:
- Severin Holzknecht; Jewish Museum of Hohenems; 2020
