The Strassler Center library collection is comprised of books, journals, and donated archival materials related to the Holocaust, the Armenian Genocide, the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda and a range of other cases of genocide and mass violence. Shelved in both the Rose Library reading room, located on the ground floor of Cohen-Lasry House, and a book annex in the Colin-Flug Graduate Study Wing, the collection has more than 10,000 volumes. Originally conceived as a library for Holocaust research, the range of titles broadened as the Center’s mandate steadily expanded. It continues to grow, with book acquisitions and primary source archival materials including letters, diaries, manuscripts, newspapers, postcards, survivor testimonies and audio/visual materials. Committed to providing access to special collections, we have made finding aids available to a world-wide audience through Clark University’s Digital Commons. Full access is also available to the over 55,500 testimonies in the USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive.
“Sitting in the library, reading about the Holocaust, you always have a way out to the city, to the history of the house, the garden, the sky, to the present,”
—Julian Bonder, Architect
When searching the catalog, please make sure the location of the book is listed as Rose Library Stacks. Rose library is a non-circulating library. If you would like special permission to check out a book, please call the library (508) 753-3761 or email librarian Robyn Conroy at rconroy@clarku.edu.
From the late 1990’s until her death in 2011, Diana Bartley was dedicated to collecting books on behalf of the Strassler Center’s Rose Library. Growing up in the midwest, the daughter of a Navy captain, she closely followed the events of the War in Europe. She was horrified reading about accounts of the Holocaust. After a varied career as an automotive journalist, an editor at Esquire Magazine, and a financial consultant, she began collecting books about the Holocaust and newspaper clippings on the subject. Reading about the founding of the Strassler Center, she inquired about donating her collection of 1,500 volumes. After that initial gift, she continued to meticulously research and collect books, donating 500-600 books annually. Ms. Bartley continued to purchase and donate books until her death in July, 2011. Today, the Bartley collection comprises over 7,000 books encompassing many genocides, and including Holocaust materials dating from 1933 to 1947.
The Diana Bartley Book Collection, including thousands of books contributed over more than a decade, forms the spine of the Rose Library. It also includes books from the Barry D. Hoffman Collection. We gratefully acknowledge them both, generous friends and inveterate book collectors.
We collect books in the belief that we are preserving them when in fact it is the books that preserve their collector.
The Rose Library is a non-lending library. Appointments are required for visits.
Robyn Conroy, Rose Librarian
