Contents & Physical Description
The collection amounts to 2 cubic feet of space. Photographs were captured across southwest Germany and Nazi occupied Austria from 1942 to 1946, and include photographs of James, his comrades, the 65th Medical Group, as well as the liberation of concentration camps at Ebensee, death of Russian slave laborers near Nurnberg, and political prisoners and German officers at Geisenhausen.
The collection contains twelve series and thirteen subseries and approximately 453 photographs. Photographs have been removed from the large box where they were loosely stored and are now contained in one large binder. The binder also includes pages that were cut from a scrapbook. The scrapbook, textiles, and ephemeral items are stored in an archival box measuring 15 x 18 x 2.25 inches. Two large rolled photographs contain group photographs of men in uniform, the backside of them signifies that they were produced by the National News and Photo Service, San Antonio, Texas. These are stored in individual boxes measuring 18.5 x 4.25 x 4.25 inches.
Photographs are in generally good condition with limited tears, markings, or foxing (an age-related process of deterioration that causes spots and browning on old paper). Most issues of severe curling have been solved by the archivers, but some remains.
Physical items in the collection consist of a scrapbook measuring 16.5 x 12.83 x 1 inches, which contain Kuykendall’s 1953 letter of discharge from the army, a booklet of the History of the 581st Motor Ambulance Company, printed in Germany 1945, and seven pages of photographs contained by adhesive photo mounting corners. Other textile and ephemeral items include one colored sash, an overseas service patch, a booklet on Bath Abbey, a small brown personal notebook containing pages of contact information, a pamphlet on Osterreichische zugspiltzbahn, and a German Phrase Book dated November 30, 1943.
Collection Organization
Original order is a concept in archival theory that a group of records should be maintained in the same order as they were placed by the record’s creator. However, due to the state in which the collection was received, the original order could not be interpreted. Thus, the team sorted the collection based on photograph subjects, locations, and markings made by the photographer. The photographs were flattened to reduce curling and then preserved into a scrapbook.
Research for the collection was conducted primarily using Ancestry and with assistance from staff at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Information found on the Ebensee cemetery and Lew Efimowitsch was provided by Dr. Wolfgang Quatember of the Zeitgeschichte Museum, the Museum for Contemporary History in Ebensee, Germany.
Thus, the archive team sorted the collection into separate series and subsequent subseries based on subject, location, or photographer markings relations between items. Image titles correspond to their series, page, and item number within the collection.
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