Holocaust Survivor Donates to MIT Music Library

After surviving a Nazi concentration camp as a boy and fleeing communist rule in his native Czechoslovakia, Michael Gruenbaum ‘53 remembers well the first job he got upon immigrating to the United States and becoming a student at MIT, reports the Boston Globe today. He worked for MIT’s Lewis Music Library while he studied engineering. And this summer he is saying thank you with impact.

He is using reparations money from the German government (paid for the time he spent in the Terezin concentration camp in Czechoslovakia) to establish a music library fund to purchase recordings, writings, sheet music, and other materials by Jewish musicians. Read the Boston Globe article.

You can also hear a photo archivist describe how a memory book from the Michael Gruenbaum Collection donated to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C. provides a glimpse into life in Theresienstadt, the Nazis’ model camp-ghetto.

For the story of how his mother saved the family repeated during their imprisonment, read Gruenbaum’s Technology Review profile, "Grit, Needlework Save Alum’s Family in Nazi Camp."