Guide to the Alexander Donat Warsaw Ghetto Articles and Photographs
undated, 1963
Finding aid encoded August, 2009
Finding aid encoded in English.
Alexander Donat was born in Warsaw in 1905, where he became the publisher and editor of the Polish daily Ostatnie Wiadomosci (Latest News) before the war, and he was deported to Maidanek after the liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto. He then was sent to four different concentration camps, while his wife Lena was sent to Auschwitz and Ravensbruck. They both survived the war, along with their son, who they had sent to live with a Polish family. Donat and his family resettled in New York, where he started a printing business and, in 1965, published his memoir "The Holocaust Kingdom." In 1977, he established the Holocaust Library, a non-profit organization that promoted the publication of books on the experiences of Jews in Europe during World War II. Donat died in 1983.
The collection contains 14 black and white undated photographs of the Warsaw Ghetto, several of which are of unidentified individuals, while the majority depict buildings and rubble. Also included are two articles written by Alexander Donat, one entitled "Our Last Days in the Warsaw Ghetto," which was published in Commentary magazine in May 1963, and one entitled "Armageddon: Twenty Years After the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising," which was published in Dissent magazing in Spring 1963. The former was adapted from a section of Donat's memoir, first published in its entirety in 1965.
This collection has been indexed under the following terms:
Subjects:Collection is available to researchers deemed to be qualified by the Archivist.
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