Scope & Contents

The papers of Dr. Shmarya Kleinman were placed in the Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs by his wife, Rose Kleinman, in April of 1962. Additional papers were placed in the Archives in February of 1979 by Dr. Kleinman and in 1986 by Dr. Henry Chapnick. The collection was opened for research in January of 1985.

Shmarya Kleinman was born in Russia around 1891 and studied medicine in Russia and Poland before emigrating to the United States in 1923. In 1927, he established his medical practice in Detroit. Dr. Kleinman, who served as the organization’s president from 1950 to 1953, and his wife Rose were active in the affairs of the Jewish Community Council of Detroit, a local civil and human rights advocacy group. Rose Kleinman helped establish the Michigan State Housing Development Authority in 1967 to finance low income housing.

The papers of Dr. Kleinman consist primarily of personal correspondence with socialist, Angelica Balabanoff, who participated in the Bolshevik revolution and was later active in the Socialist Party in Italy. Balabanoff’s autobiography, My Life as a Rebel., was published in 1938. The collection also contains a copy of her published poems, Tears, and a typescript of Dr. Kleinman’s autobiography, dealing primarily with his experience as a medical student in revolutionary Russia and Poland and his career as a physician, reformer, and political activist in Detroit from the late 1920s to the early 1940s.

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Transfers

Several copies of the Socialist Proclamation and War Program (May 1917) have been placed

in the Archives Audiovisual Collection.

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Contents

1. Balabanoff, Angelica; Tears, 1943

2. Balabanoff, Angelica; correspondence, 1944-62

3. Kleinman, Shmarya; autobiography

Finding Aid end