Page 296 - ISRAEL'S CRADLE

within a few years, most of them in the first half of the Fifties. Paul Alsberg, then a young student who was hired in the Archive in 1949, was responsible for their intake. Alsberg, an archivist with considerable skills in order and organization, implemented a new and simple method for marking the divisions. In 1957, days before he would become the Supervisor for the State Archive, he gathered his oral tradition into a written doctrine and presented it in detail in a special work meeting of the Archive's scientific clerks. This document covered 29 printed pages and would eventually become the guide for registering the divisions and collections that serves the Central Zionist Archive to this day.
In 1955, upon turning seventy, Dr. Herlitz retired and Dr. Bein succeeded him as Director of the Zionist Archive. A year later in 1956, David Ben-Gurion signed Dr. Alex Bein's letter of appointment as the State Curator and upon his appointment, he also headed the Council of Archives. In 1958, the Union of the Archivists in Israel was established and was headed by Dr. Bein, one of its initiators. In 1960, the Hebrew University launched a progremme for Archivism Studies, headed by Dr. Bein. Thus, Dr. Bein held all the key positions in the world of archivism in Israel for a whole decade. Bein position and centralized nature were expressed well in the document that outlined the new organizational structure that he implemented in 1958 in the Zionist Archive, according to which he held the reins of all the archive units including the administration, despite his many and varied activities.
This document exposes several of the prominent employees in the Archive, including Dr. Israel Klausner – the Chief Assistant and the person responsible for the private archives and printed materials; Joseph Wankert – the supervisor of microfilm photography as well as for publications and exhibits; Dr. Michael Heymann – the supervisor for handling the institutional archives as well as "scientific information," i.e. Chief Advisor; and Israel Philip – the person responsible for the newspaper collection. Adina Haran was made responsible for the photograph collection as well as public service in the reading hall.
Upon Dr. Bein's initiative, the 24th Zionist Congress, which convened in 1956 in Jerusalem, ratified for the first time the status of the Archive as the archive of the World Zionist Organization and all the institutions and funds it established as well as all the Yishuv's institutions, and charged all their units with the duty to deposit the materials in the Archive. The Congress further authorized the Director of the Archive to be the sole person responsible for materials disposal.
The Plan to Establish an "Archive City"
During the Sixties, thousands of meters of files were taken into the Archive, whose content was detailed in reports that were sent every year to the Congress. The prominent divisions that were taken in at the time were the Head Office of Keren Hayesod (1926-1965), the APC Bank (1903-1940), the PICA (The Palestine Jewish Colonization Association) Archive (about five tons of paper that were deposited in a special space in Binyenei HaUma), the Henrietta Szold Archive, the Leib Yaffe Archive, the photographs archive of Zvi Oron (Orushkes), the KKL-JNF stamp collection (1962) and more. Of particular note were the continuous negotiations to receive the Nahum Sokolow
294