Collections Database Manuscript & Object Collect... Extensive archival and manu... Heller-Shimkin Papers Finding AidTitle: Heller-Shimkin Papers
ID: 01/01/MSS00021
Primary Creator: Heller, Sarah Gofseyeff
Extent: 21.0 Cubic Feet
Arrangement:
The Heller-Shimkin Papers are arranged into 6 series:
Series 1: Sarah Gofseyeff Heller Materials; Subseries 1 - Correspondence (postcards, letters); Subseries 2 - Notes (alphabetized); Subseries 3 - Documents (personal files, music, recipes); Subseries 4 - Publications (bulletins and pamphlets, newspapers, journals and reports)
Series 2: Shimkin Materials; Subseries 1 - Boris M. Shimkin Engineering Papers; Subseries 2 - Michael B. Shimkin Cancer Research
Series 3: Rachel Fraenkel Women's Zionist Society of Great Britain and Ireland Materials
Series 4: Photographs and Media
Series 5: Books
Series 6: Oversized and typewriters
Throughout her life, Sarah Gofseyeff Heller advocated for the Zionist movement, American Jewish women, the establishment of a Jewish immigrant community in the United States, and the State of Israel. The Gofseyeff family were Polish Jews from a shtetl that was destroyed during the Holocaust. The Sarah G. Heller Materials document her life on Long Island, involvement in the Zionist movement, international relationships with family members in Palestine, and many other topics relating to Jewish and Jewish-American history and culture. Her materials also include a sizeable quantity of family recipes, sheet music, and songs.
The Shimkin Materials contain information on Boris M. Shimkin's engineering pursuits and affiliation with the University of California at Berkeley, as well as several articles and books published by Michael B. Shimkin on cancer research.
The Rachel Fraenkel Materials highlight the Zionist Movement in Great Britain. Of particular interest is a 1921 copy of Albert Einstein's Theory of Relativity, published in Berlin in Yiddish and postcards from the early-twentieth century that depict various scenes relating to Zionism, Israel, art, and culture.
The Heller-Shimkin Papers also contain several boxes of photographs as well as twenty books, including the Collected Works of Isaac Leib Peretz in Yiddish. Two typewriters are placed at the end of the collection.
Sarah Gofseyeff Heller was born in Russia in December 1902 to Morris and Rifka [Anglicized Rebecca] Nissenbaum Gofseyeff. After being held as prisoners of war by the Germans during World War I, Sarah and some of her immediate family members immigrated to the United States in 1922, when they settled in the Bronx, New York. Morris acquired an occupation first as a meat inspector and then as an insurance agent, and Sarah and her sister made women's hats. Two of Morris and Rifka's children, Jankel and Rubin, lived in Palestine and did not immigrate with the family. Other relatives remained in Eastern Europe and were murdered in the Holocaust twenty years later. Sarah Gofseyeff married Emanuel Heller (1900-1986), a newsdealer from Grodno (modern-day Belarus), October 18, 1928 in the Bronx. The couple had two children: Mortimer Bernard "Morty" Heller and Tauby Heller Weichsel Shimkin, who would marry University of Illinois-professor Demetri Boris Shimkin. Heller died May 13, 1997 and is buried at New Montefiore Cemetery in Suffolk County, New York alongside her husband.
The son-in-law of Sarah Gofseyeff Heller, Demetri Boris Shimkin was born in Omsk, Siberia on July 4, 1916 to Boris Michael and Lydia Shimkin and left Russia with his immediate family following the Russian Revolution. After settling in Indonesia and Holland, the Shimkins relocated to the United States, where Demetri graduated with bachelor's and doctoral degrees in anthropology from the University of California at Berkeley in the 1930s. Demetri's father Boris was affiliated with the engineering program at the University of California and involved in bridge and railroad construction (he had been active in the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railroad before the family's immigration). Demetri's brother Michael Boris Shimkin played an important role in American cancer research, establishing the National Cancer Institute's Laboratory for Experimental Oncology and working at the University of California at San Diego.
Demetri Shimkin served with military intelligence during World War II and became a faculty member at the University of Illinois in 1960. He first married to Edith Manning, and his son Alexander died as a journalist in Vietnam after volunteering for the Mississippi Freedom Summer of 1964. He remarried Tauby Heller and died in Urbana, Illinois in 1992.
Rachel Fraenkel was active in the Women's Zionist Society of Great Britain and Ireland and the chairman of the Slough, Windsor, and Maidenhead Women's Zionist Society in the 1940s.
Sources
"Demetri Shimkin, 76, An Anthropologist." New York Times, December 25, 1992.
"Michael Boris Shimkin Papers." Mandeville Special Collections Library. University of California at San Diego.
National Archives and Records Administration; Washington, DC; NAI Title: Index to Petitions for Naturalizations Filed in Federal, State, and Local Courts in New York City, 1792-1906; NAI Number: 5700802; Record Group Title: Records of District Courts of the United States, 1685-2009; Record Group Number: RG 21.
New York City Municipal Archives; New York, New York; Borough: Bronx
New York State Archives; Albany, New York; State Population Census Schedules, 1925; Election District:12; Assembly District: 07; City: New York; County: Bronx; Page:8.
Repository: Rare Book & Manuscript Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Access Restrictions: Open to researchers.
Use Restrictions:
The RBML reproductions policies can be found here:
http://www.library.illinois.edu/rbx/ReproductionServices.htm
The copyright law of the United States (Title 17, United States Code) governs the making of photocopies or other reproductions of copyrighted materials.
Under certain conditions specified in the law, libraries and archives are authorized to furnish a photocopy or other reproduction. One of these specified conditions is that the photocopy or reproduction is not to be "used for any purpose other than private study scholarship or research." If a user makes a request for, or later uses, a photocopy or reproduction for purposes in excess of "fair use," that user may be liable for copyright infringement.
This institution reserves the right to refuse to accept a copying order if, in its judgement, fulfillment of the order would damage materials or involve violation of copyright law.
Processing Information: https://wiki.cites.uiuc.edu/wiki/display/librare/Home
Submit request (Aeon)
