The C.L. Sonnichsen Special Collections Department is located on the sixth floor of the UTEP Library.
Some of our services might be limited due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Please email Claudia Rivers crivers@utep.edu or Abbie Weiser ahweiser@utep.edu for more information.
To learn more about the Special Collections Department at the UTEP Library, click here.
To view a short video about how to use UTEP Special Collections, click here.
Special Collections contains a Judaica book collection.
Some archival collections relevant to this course include:
Fanny Zlabovsky - National Council of Jewish Women case files, MS508
- Fanny Hutman Zlabovsky worked for the El Paso section of the National Council of Jewish Women from 1920 until the early 1940s. She primarily helped Jewish people escaping European fascism immigrate to the United States - often through Ciudad Juárez. The collection includes 239 case files that include correspondence in English and Yiddish with immigrants and their families as well as with officials at the national office of the NCJW, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, and other national and international organizations that assisted immigrants in the 1920s to 1940s.
Cleofas Calleros papers, MS231
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Cleofas Calleros (1896- 1973) was the Mexican Border Representative of the National Catholic Welfare Conference’s Bureau of Immigration in El Paso. From 1926 until his retirement in 1968, he handled over a million immigration cases in his role as welfare director and social worker, including assisting religious groups who were persecuted and expelled by the Mexican government in the 1930s.
National Catholic Welfare Conference case files, MS173
- The National Catholic Welfare Conference case files date 1904 – 1958. The collection contains case files of clients who received assistance from the Border Office of the National Catholic Welfare Conference. Types of records found in these files include forms, correspondence, notes, border crossing cards, and other legal documents. The case files are primarily arranged in alphabetical order by the name of the client. The alphabetical sequence begins with G and goes through Z.
R.E. Thomason papers, MS141
- Robert Ewing Thomason (1879 – 1973) was a lawyer and former mayor of El Paso, Texas, for two terms (1927 and 1929, respectively). He served as a United States Congressman from the 16th District of Texas from 1930-1947. Thomason was part of an inspection team composed of members from the House and Senate and American reporters sent to investigate war atrocities in Nazi death camps.
German ephemera collection, MS311
- The German ephemera collection, MS311, dates 1912 – 1989. The collection includes some publications and photographs of the Hitler Youth Academy, the Holocaust (concentration camps), and a communion. The collection also includes some materials from the former Soviet Union.
Julius Rivera papers, MS162
- Dr. Julius Rivera (1917 –2014) was a Professor Emeritus of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP). His papers contain clippings and subject files about Latin America.
Bruce Berman photographs of Holocaust survivors, PH073
- Seven color photographs of local survivors, circa 2006 - 2007.
Oral History collection [includes oral histories with local survivors]
