Morris Dembowitz papers
Extent and Medium
oversize box
1
Creator(s)
- Morris Dembowitz
Biographical History
Rabbi Morris Dembowitz was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1915. His family had originally come from the Bialystok region of Poland. Morris Dembowitz attended Yeshiva University and then received rabbinic ordination from the Jewish Theological Seminary. He married Leonore Markson in 1942. He served as a chaplain during World War II and was stationed first in Rouen, then in the children's home Ecouis where he worked with child survivors of Buchenwald and eventually in the Heidenheim displaced persons camp. Among his activities was the overseeing of the exhumation and reburial of Jewish victims of the Holocaust. He later served as the Executive Director of the Board of Rabbis of Greater Philadelphia. Rabbi Dembowitz passed away in 2006.
Archival History
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Acquisition
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of David Dembowitz
David Dembowitz donated these photographs to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2014. They belonged to his father, Rabbi Morris Dembowitz, who was an Army chaplain. Rabbi Dembowitz received these from Arnold Wolters.
Scope and Content
Consists of enlarged original photographic prints with original captions in English and German taken by members of the Ninth Army, United States military, in the aftermath of the Gardelegen atrocity. Includes photographs of victims of the massacre and of the burial of the corpses. Also includes a letter, dated 24 December 1946 and signed by "A. Kamerman," regarding a recording of the "Treblinka Song" by two children; the letter accompanied the original phonograph of this recording.
People
- Morris Dembowitz
Corporate Bodies
- United States. Army. Army, 9th
Subjects
- Gardelegen massacre, 1945.
- Gardelegen (Germany)
Genre
- Photographs.
- Letter.
- Document