Records of the Hauptamt Wissenschaft- series Kennkarten, Police Identification Cards assigned to German Jews (RG 222)

Contains 4689 administrative duplicates of police identification cards, called Kennkarten, issued to German Jews in the period c. 1939 – c. 1942 from several municipalities in Germany, including substantial numbers of cards from Mainz (Stadt & Land), Frankfurt A.M., Geissen, Darmstadt (Stadt & Land) and Worms. The Institut der NSDAP zur Erforschung der Judenfrage in Frankfurt am Main, or the Institute for the Study of the Jewish Question, was founded in April 1939 with the objective of creating a Hohe Schule which would be a university dedicated to the study of Nazi philosophy especially the theories of racialism and the study of the Jewish question. The institute was opened on March 28, 1941 and was under the direction of Alfred Rosenberg, who was also the head of the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR) the Nazi pillaging unit which traveled to all parts of occupied Europe and ransacked and plundered homes, communal organizations and libraries, and removed original Jewish books, manuscripts, religious artifacts, and artworks. The ERR units transported the plundered materials to the Institute in Frankfurt as well as in Hungen. Copyright Holder: Yivo Institute for Jewish Research