Mendheim Family Collection

The Mendheim Family Collection documents the life of Florence Mendheim and her relatives. The collection consists largely of correspondence, but also holds samples of Florence Mendheim's writing, a small amount of family personal papers, and a few books.

The major focus of this collection is the Mendheim family. In addition to the personal papers of Series I, which include war ration books and selective service cards among its contents, there is also some correspondence between family members in Subseries 1 of Series II. Much of this correspondence relates news of family members or mention of significant events or activities. There are also some handwritten letters from the late nineteenth century. Series IV includes a family bible as well as copies of pages from family prayer books with notes.

In addition to correspondence with family members, Series II contains correspondence between Florence Mendheim and others. Prominent among these are the letters of Edward Fox, an individual who resided in China and sent Florence many letters that describe his experiences there. Other notable correspondence includes that of Subseries 2. This subseries holds correspondence deriving from Florence Mendheim's work as secretary of the Committee for Arab-Jewish Understanding, an organization that attempted to bring about a compromise between Arabs and Jews in New York City on the question of Palestine (now Israel).

Evidence of Florence Mendheim's literary aspirations is seen in multiple areas of the collection. Chief among these are the samples of her creative writing, much of it in the form of plays, in Series III. This series additionally holds a brief article, a short story, and some reports on the activities of the New York branch of the Friends of New Germany, a Nazi support group of the 1930s.