Faber Family

[Bill Murray]

Hi Cammie:

Ouch!!!
I had no idea that you had run into so many dead ends nor that you had made so many contacts outside this Forum.
But I guess that this is probably how you found the Forum in the first place

My caveat that I know nothing of document collecting/collections will have to stand me in good stead.

So, maybe this Forum and perhaps a few others like it should be your "home' so to say to try to piece together the whole history of the two sides of the family (Do I have that right?) where you are amongst others who have no financial or idealogical motivation.

Seems to me that goal #1 is to get it all sorted out by the earlier mentioned timeline, get as much translated as you can and assemble it as completely as you can as an historical document. If your family wishes to have it, you can pass it on, if not I really don't know what you can do other than find the most suitable place or places to pass it on to.
I do think that my earlier thoughts on trying to find and contact the military units involved in the information you have developed so far may be a place to pass that part of it on and the school may have a following that would be interested in that documentation.

I do have a similar situation in that my children and grandchildren have no interest in my Dad's stuff, too much of a generational gap I guess. The Marine Corps History Department is interested, but like you I fear it will just go into a void of millions of images that may not see the light of day.

For my part, I intend to pass on those images and whatever written materiel that seems interesting via postings to Forums such as this one as I know there is an audience that appreciates it.

Get er Done Girl

Bill

[Larry D.]

Well said, Cammie. I can certainly understand your frustration as I have the same problem regarding the disposition of my family papers. My situation is a little easier because I am going to endow my collection and all archives and historical societies love money - it's the one bait that never fails. But I must admit that I thought the Jewish organizations would be different because they are so focused on the preservation of Holocaust history. Since the organizations that you have contacted have proven to be a disappointment, perhaps you will have to look at this as a much longer term project than you have. By that I mean nibble away on the translating a few at a time and if it takes 10 years to finish the collection instead of 10 weeks, then so be it. Persevere. It's for the benefit of your family and that's your motivation. The biggest and most difficult task will be the personal handwritten letters in three different languages, and you ultimately may have to pay someone to translate those for you a few at a time.

L.

[Sunkisdgrl]

Larry there may be some Jewish Organizations that would be interested, I have a couple of ideas but I haven't pursued them further than making contact because I don't feel comfortable just shipping everything off. I'd really like to understand better what I have here before I do anything with it. At first I really didn't want to even look at it, I thought it's the past, move on and finally get rid of this stuff in your family, give it to someone else who will do something with it. WWII and the Holocaust affected my family members for their lifetimes, they were very different people in their interactions with other people and society. They were always suspicious of people and their motives, defensive, frugal in case of another war and had deep psychological issues with trust, money, food, ect. I've come to realize that the results of their experience have affected generations in my family, if nothing else even my children are trained that you never waste food. I'd like to understand better what made my family members the way they were. I know the "family story" that's been told to me plenty of times, enough to make me almost numb to it, it was lacking some details for sure, but I've realized that for me to really understand that period of time (which I may never) I need to take the time to deal with these things and look at them. I talked to my kids tonight after Bill's suggestion that they may want to keep this entire collection and they both felt that it would be better off with someone who might want to fully research it. We've already talked about making a family album/family tree and putting some things into shadow boxes to display but for the bulk of letters, pictures and documents there's only so much that we can do with them, especially the letters. My girls helped me take care of my Grandmother for the last couple years before her passing and so they have a basic understanding of WWII history and how it effected our family members' life paths.

I'm happy to share what I have with this forum if people are interested and would be willing to help educate me also in the process. I'd be happy to try and post some better pictures and put them in the right spots on the forum but may need a little help with where they belong, doesn't seem to be my forte. Anyone has my permission to use my pictures here or move them around to where they go. Some of the pictures of Faye's unit and the weather service have several duplicates, maybe someone would be interested in them for their collection in exchange for some translation work? With everything that I have going at home there is not much room to pay someone but maybe in the future.

I've come to terms with what I feel is the right thing to do and now I guess I just need to settle in for the long haul and do it

Cammie

[djpool]

Hi Cammie,

Interesting thread and nice pictures. I sent you an E mail seeking your assistance. Warm Regards,

Jim Pool

[BackAgain]

Hello all! I know this thread is very old but I wanted to follow up for anyone researching this material now or in the future. When I found this archive and even after working with you folks here I didn't realize the significance of this matter. I just wanted to understand my family but as the saying goes, be careful what you wish for. Only recently, in the last year or so, have I come to begin to fully understand what I was searching for all those years ago.

I want to apologize for abruptly leaving the forum and not returning sooner. I had asked an ephemera dealer from San Francisco to come and look over this material and help me in understanding it and unfortunately a few items, specifically passports, were stolen. They have not been recovered. At that point I decided that it wasn't in my best interest to continue to hold onto this material for several reasons. I was worried someone would come back unexpectedly to steal more of it, possibly hurting myself or my kids and I simply didn't have the money or the time to deal with the massive volume (as you'll see below). I had a kind of foreboding about the whole thing and I was a single mother of two whose's own Mother (my Grandmother Marion) had just passed away. I had to move out of my childhood home and watch it sold by a bank and it just wasn't the right timing in my life. I feel I owe you all this apology and follow up because you were so helpful, more so then anyone else I'd asked for help.

I settled on selling the archive through PBA Galleries in San Francisco. I put a very high reserve bid on it because I really didn't want to see it sold and my ability to come back to it at a later date gone. I did this with a caveat that if the entire collection would be used for research and made available to the public for research I would drop the cost substantially. The University of Southern California made an offer and accepted my terms and I felt it was a perfect arrangement at the time. Every item is available to view in person at USC. It was my wish that everything be available online but we don't always get what we wish for and this was a satisfactory compromise for me to get it all to a good place for further study.

The entire collection can be found online here: https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/1303 ... tire_text/

Here is the listing by PBA Galleries:
https://www.pbagalleries.com/view-aucti ... 3Fpage%3D2

Below you'll find pictures of the paper catalog with a full inventory of the collection before it went to USC. As you can see it is quite voluminous and it was overwhelming for me at the time. As much as I enjoyed learning about my family and finding the puzzle pieces, if you will, it was a lot to process at the time. It still is.

https://kapwi.ng/c/EY0rxy6CKv
https://kapwi.ng/c/I0GZ3giK5l
https://kapwi.ng/c/CYNnWqJLwg
https://kapwi.ng/c/833B_4KJMj
https://kapwi.ng/c/L_DSDhvwz-
https://kapwi.ng/c/Boyt8c3KA_

I hope you'll forgive me for the absence if any of you are still around and I just want to express my deep gratitude for the help that you all provided, it's been invaluable to me, both when this thread began as well as now. If anyone has any questions I'll check back on this thread regularly or my email is backagain@email.com. My greatest wish is that something good comes out of sharing this so publicly. History is a love of mine and I truly feel we must honestly learn from it lest we repeat it. ~Cammie

[BackAgain]

Just to add, I spoke to my Aunt today and she told me that my Great-Grandfather used to stand in the middle of a square in Berlin and yell about the impending Holocaust in an effort to try to warn people. Faye had warned him years ahead of time. I'd never heard that story before. My Aunt also said that while she was growing up she'd heard that story and others about WW2 so many times his friends told him to talk about something else.