John M. Steiner collection

Overview

Collection Summary

The papers and recordings of Dr. John Michael Steiner which include 1. correspondence, writings, transcripts and recorded interviews, questionnaires, printed material, and collected research materials documenting Steiner’s experiences during the Holocaust and his internment in several Nazi concentration camps, the immediate post-war years, and his career as a sociologist and a scholar who studied the Holocaust and its origins; 2. materials related to his interviews with former Nazis, in particular members of the SS and other Nazi officials, which include audio recordings, correspondence with interviewees and other scholars, original documents relating to a member of the Hitler Youth, original correspondence from Erich Ludendorff, and newsletters produced by Otto Strasser; and 3. extensive correspondence, writings, and research materials about the sociology of the Holocaust, including the social psychology of perpetrators and authoritarian personality traits, as well as materials related to Philip Zimbardo's "Stanford Prison Experiment," about which Steiner lectured and wrote.

Provenance

Ingmar Steiner donated the John M. Steiner collection to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2016.