Otto S. Leib Collection

This collection contains a handwritten recipe book in Yiddish and German with entries dating to the 18th and 19th centuries, as well as some of Otto Leib's correspondence and essays from the late 20th century regarding the Jewish experience in Southern Germany and Switzerland.

The largest single item is the recipe book, but most of the items date to the 1990s. In general, the materials consist of correspondence to individuals and public officials sent or received by Leib. The letters cover a broad span of topics, but the largest group concerns questions of Swiss-Jewish identity and the controversy surrounding the Swiss government's reparation payments to its former Jewish refugees. Other topics include contemporary memory work and community history for the former Jews of Baden-Württemberg, relations between Eastern and Western European Jews, and the police records of Dortmund during the National Socialist era. There are also a few short essays, and a couple of photocopied documents and personal papers dating to the 19th century and 1930s.