Out of the Box: Snapshots of a Life

With a keen photographic eye and sharp sense of humor, Emil Carl Grossmann documented his life as he encountered the quotidian joys and historic upheavals characterizing a life that spanned the 20th century. Diverse materials including autographed playbills, photographs of zoo animals, and personal ads, along with reminders of his family’s tragic history, come together to give a fuller picture of Grossmann and his time. By exploring his archival collection, Sarah Glover, Archivist at the Center for Jewish History, shows how much we can learn from just one box.  With Michael Simonson, head of the Reference Department and Director of Public Outreach for the Leo Baeck Institute.

About the Series

At the Center for Jewish History, there are tens of thousands of boxes in our partners’ archival collections. Boxes filled with photographs, journals, letters, and documents. We take these treasures Out of the Box in our new series. Join us!

About the Speakers

Sarah Glover is an Archivist and Digitization Projects Liaison at the Center for Jewish History, where she has worked since 2015. She received her undergraduate degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where she studied English, History, and Jewish Studies and her Master of Science in Information from the University of Michigan. Sarah uses her knowledge of German, Hebrew, and Yiddish in her archival work.

Michael Simonson serves as the head of the Ira S. Lewy Reference Department and as the Director of Public Outreach for the Leo Baeck Institute. Originally from Minnesota, Michael studied German history and German language before attending Pratt Institute for archival studies. A former President of the Archivist Roundtable of Metropolitan New York, Michael has worked as an archivist at LBI for the last 17 years.

Presented by the Center for Jewish History and the Leo Baeck Institute.