The Ball-Kaduri Collection: Contemporary testimonies and reports regarding the Holocaust of the Jews of Germany and Central Europe, 1943-1960

Dr. Kurt Ball-Kaduri was born in Berlin in 1891. A lawyer and legal adviser to the Prussian government, he was also active in Jewish affairs. He made aliya to Eretz Israel in December 1938.

Dr. Ball-Kaduri, who was active in collecting material and writing about German Jewry, became aware that much material that reached the archives regarding Jewish life in Germany from 1933 to 1945 was incomplete, and that there were large information gaps. From his own public activities in Germany, he knew very well that many activities were conducted without any documentation, especially after the Nazi rise to power. For example, official applications were effected through indirect means, relying on various personal connections, and official meetings were not held, because notice of every official meeting had to be given to the Gestapo, who would send its representatives to attend each meeting. Thus, decisions were made at unofficial meetings, and the report regarding implementation of these decisions was passed on by word of mouth. For these reasons, Dr. Ball-Kaduri decided to gather material orally from the people involved in Jewish life and the activities of the Jewish organizations.

In 1943 Dr. Ball-Kaduri began to collect the information and actually established his collection . He applied to various people whom he knew in Eretz Israel and asked that they write their memoirs. He interviewed some of them himself, and thus gathered much material. He also turned to people who had immigrated to other countries with a request that they send material, but, in his own words, here he met with partial success. In the course of time the subjects of his collection expended to documentation that did not pertain to Germany alone. In May 1945, the collection became his exclusive property, and in 1955 he handed it over to Yad Vashem, while continuing to collect related documentation for Yad Vashem until 1960.