O.91 - Mordechai Friedman Collection
Mordechai Friedman was born in Pultusk, Poland, in 1937. At the outbreak of World War II in 1939, his family escaped to the Soviet Union. At the end of the war, his family returned to Poland, and some time later they escaped to Germany with the She’erith Hapletah. Friedman attended elementary school in Germany, and in 1949 made aliya to Eretz Israel. As part of his studies for his Master's degree in the History of the Jewish People, Friedman submitted a Master's thesis on Orthodox Jewry in New York, 1891-1914; his advisor was Professor Uriel Tal. Friedman's doctoral thesis deals with the political, ideological and social reactions of the American Jews to the Holocaust of the European Jews, 1939-1945.
The Mordechai Friedman Collection is comprised mainly of copies of documents Friedman gathered from American archives (Jewish and public) that served him in the course of the preparation of his doctoral thesis and his various studies regarding the reaction of American Jewry to the Holocaust of the European Jews.