Torczyner collection

Contains documents about the activities of the Maccabi Aid Committee and the Maccabi World Union. The activities involved the 1939 organization of illegal transports of Jewish refugees travelling by boat on the Danube River from Vienna, Austria, across Hungary and Yugoslavia, to Palestine. Another activity was to find a place in Bolivia to settle hundreds of Jewish refugees. Includes an atlas of Bolivia. Also includes corresdondence between various members of the family living as refugees in Palestine, Shanghai, China, and Havana, Cuba. The Palestine branch of the Torczyner family are survivors of the catastrophe of the ship, "Patria," which sank in the harbor of Haifa, Israel. Their first letters originate from a British detention camp in Athlit, Israel, where they spent 18 months. The collection also includes post-World War II letters of friends finding each other alive after the Holocaust. Also in the collection is piece of white fabric allegedly from the Theresienstadt concentration camp waiting to be transferred to the Art and Artifacts Branch.