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Subject Guide: Disability History

Archival and library collection highlights found at the Center related to the history of disabled individuals and communities as well as the organizations that helped fund research and quality of life.

Sheet of poster stamps used to raise funds for disabled veterans and war orphans, 1940s. 2001.049. YUM

Accessibility History

Blindness History

Collection of treatises dealing with the blind / by Siegfried Altmann. Written from 1924-1940. From the Estate of Siegfried Altmann. 

Psychological problems of the blind infant / by Siegfried Altmann. In Papers to be presented by the delegates [to the] World Conference On Work for the Blind; supplement to preliminary edition. New York. 1931. 

The training of partially sighted children in a school for the blind / by M. E. Frampton and Vita Stein. From The New York Institute for the Education of the Blind; Monograph no. 4. 1936.

Crusader for light: Julius R. Friedlander, founder of the Overbrook School for the Blind, 1832 / by Elisabeth Freund. Dorrance, 1959. 

Charity ... the blind / Guild for the Jewish Blind (New York). 1936. 

Books for the Adult Blind, including the talking-book machine activity, and, Service for the Blind, from the annual reports / Library of Congress. 1938.

The printing visagraph / by Robert E. Naumberg. Outlook for the Blind, 1931.

Ordinary daylight : Portrait of an artist going blind / by Andrew Potok. Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1980.

Blind children / by Israel Zangwill. Funk & Wagnalls Company, 1903. 

Student at the Lexington School for the Deaf, 1942. From the United Jewish Appeal-Federation of New York Collection, I-433. AJHS

Deaf & Hard of Hearing History

The morning & evening sacrifice: how to be represented in these days; with special reference to the claims of deaf mutes in the Jewish community; a sermon delivered in the Great Synagogue, Duke's Place, on Sh.K. P. Va-era R.H. Shevat, 5625 L.F.K., January 28th, 5625 / by the Rev. Dr. Nathan Marcs Adler, Chief Rabbi. Printed by Wertheimer and Co.,1865.

Our father Abe: the Story of a deaf shoe repairman / by Harvey L. Barash and Eva Barash Dicker. Abar Press, 1991.

Celebrating Judaism in the home: a Manual for deaf Jewish families / by Rabbi Miriam Biatch. Temple Beth Solomon of the Deaf, 1996.

Surviving in silence: a Deaf boy in the Holocaust: the Harry Dunai story / by Eleanor C. Dunai. Gallaudet University Press, 2002.

A deaf adult speaks out / by Leo M. Jacobs. Gallaudet University Press. 1989. 

An account of the origin and progress of the Pennsylvania Institution for the Deaf and Dumb: With a list of the contributors / Pennsylvania Institution for the Deaf and Dumb, 1821. 

A sketch of the origin and progress of the institutions for the instruction of the deaf and dumb in Pennsylvania: Exhibiting succinctly from authentic documents the persevering exertions of the present principal of the Philadelphia Asylum for the Deaf and Dumb / Pennsylvania Institution for the Deaf and Dumb, 1822. 

Second annual report of the directors of the Pennsylvania Institution for the Deaf and Dumb: Made to the legislature in obedience to the provisions of the charter / Pennsylvania Institution for the Deaf and Dumb, 1823. 

Deaf people in Hitler's Europe / edited by Donna F. Ryan and John S. Schuchman. Gallaudet University Press, 2002.

The deaf Jew in the modern world / edited by Jerome D. Schein and Lester J. Waldman. Ktav Publishing House for the New York Society for the Deaf, 1985.

Signs in Judaism: a Resource book for the Jewish deaf community / by Adele Kronick Shuart ; illustrated by Ruth E. Peterson. Bloch Publishing Co. for the National Congress of Jewish Deaf, 1986. 

In silence: Growing up hearing in a deaf world / by Ruth Sidransky. St. Martin's Press, 1990.

Sidur zeroʻa neṭuyah = Siddur zeroa netuyah = Prayerbook of the outstretched arm / Temple Beth Solomon of the Deaf, 1989.

Disability History

Judaism and disability: Portrayals in ancient texts from the Tanach through the Bavli / by Judith Z. Abrams. Gallaudet University Press, 1998.

Jewish relational care A-Z: We are our other's keeper / edited by Jack H. Bloom. Haworth Press, 2006.

Forgotten crimes: the Holocaust and people with disabilities / by Suzanne E. Evans. Ivan R. Dee, 2004.

The origins of Nazi genocide: From euthanasia to the final solution / by Henry Friedlander. University of North Carolina Press, 1995.

Social outsiders in Nazi Germany / edited by Robert Gellately and Nathan Stoltzfus. Princeton University Press, 2001.

Halacha, medical science, and technology: Perspectives on contemporary Halacha issues / by Faitel Levin. Maznaim, 1987.

Hitler's unwanted children: Children with disabilities, orphans, juvenile delinquents and non-conformist young people in Nazi Germany / by Sally Rogow. 1998.

Disabled children outdoors, undated. From the United Jewish Appeal-Federation of New York Collection, I-433. AJHS