The Leo Baeck Institute, a New York-based research library and archive devoted to documenting the history of German-speaking Jewry, has completed the digitization of its entire archive, which will provide free online access to primary-source materials encompassing five centuries of Jewish life in Central Europe.
The expanded archive, which will be available as of Oct. 16, purports to be the first of its kind to be made available on the Internet in its entirety.
The project, named DigiBaeck (www.lbi.org/digibaeck), offers digital access to a collection that includes 3.5 million pages of material ranging from the personal papers and photographs of Albert Einstein and Moses Mendelssohn to letters, diaries, recipes and other ephemera chronicling the lives of everyday people.
In addition to documents in German and other languages the collection includes many English translations. The institute partnered with Internet Archive, a nonprofit digital library, on the project.
“Before the Nazi seizure of power, Jews in Germany probably had better opportunities for success than Jews anywhere else in the world,†Carol Kahn Strauss, the institute's executive director, said in a statement. “As a new Jewish community once again flourishes in Germany, it is all the more important to ensure it also has broad access to this past.â€
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