The JCI-Digital Project provides online access to a growing selection of published works, journal articles, manuscripts, and photographs held in our library and archive collections.
We welcome proposals for future online exhibitions based on our archival holdings. Topics may include German-Jewish heritage, family histories, or educational initiatives. To submit a proposal, please contact the Joseph Carlebach Institute.
Hamburg · 1926 – 1942
Ruth Carlebach was born in Hamburg in August 1926. She perished on March 26, 1942, aged 15.
These documents are preserved in the JCI Research Archive, Bar-Ilan University, as part of the Prof. Dr. Miriam Gillis-Carlebach collection.
Hamburg, March 1938
These words were written by Ruth Carlebach at approximately age eleven — a handwritten keepsake gifted to a friend shortly before Kristallnacht.
Ruth’s Family letters document the everyday life of a Jewish child growing up under National Socialism: family news, a new bicycle, pet birds, a garden bed planted in hope of Palestine.
May her memory be a blessing! — זכרונה לברכה
This curated collection documents the lives and heritage of Hamburg's Jewish community and the shaping of Holocaust memory.
From the letter of Lotte Carlebach to her mother Martha Preuss in Jerusalem
April 26, 2026