Samuel Glauber has been installed as the Miriam Barr Librarian for Jewish and Near Eastern Studies at Washington University in St. Louis. A ceremony took place May 4 in Ridgley Hall’s Holmes Lounge.
A scholar of modern Jewish history specializing in East European Jewry and its diaspora communities, Glauber’s work has appeared in numerous journals. He is the co-editor of four collections of Hebrew essays published by Blima Books.
Glauber’s installation lecture, titled “There and back again, or: How a Hebrew book from St. Louis survived the Holocaust and returned home,” described the remarkable journey of an individual volume Glauber discovered on his first day working with the materials in the WashU Libraries’ collection.
This new position was endowed in honor of Miriam Barr, who died in June 2021, by her son, Eliav Barr, and his husband, Paul Koulogeorge, AB ’88. Their gift established an endowed fund at WashU Libraries to support a subject librarian, the Miriam Barr Librarian for Jewish and Near Eastern Studies, and provides resources to advance collecting, scholarship and programming in this field.
“Sam’s appointment to this position has fulfilled a critical need within the libraries,” said Mimi Calter, vice provost and university librarian, who introduced Glauber at the ceremony. “Having a scholar who possesses both a command of Hebrew and a strong understanding of Eastern European history is allowing us to look at our collections in a way that we haven’t been able to in the past.”
An avid collector, Miriam Barr possessed an eye for finding and appreciating beauty. Although her collecting interests were broad, Barr was especially drawn to books and Judaica like historical photographs, maps and other artifacts.
“It is a great privilege, as well as a great responsibility, to take on this role to care for the many works of Jewish cultural heritage held here at WashU and in so doing, to honor the legacy of Miriam Barr, a Holocaust survivor, beloved matriarch and a lover of Jewish books and libraries,” Glauber said.
Glauber earned a master’s degree from Ben Gurion University in Israel, where he is working to complete a PhD. He thanked the Barr family for their vision and generosity in creating the endowed librarian position.
“Libraries, of course, contain many treasures,” Glauber said. “But without librarians to serve as their stewards and to provide access to them, these treasures can languish on the shelf for many years without anyone knowing that they’re there.”
About Miriam Barr
Born in 1937 to Jewish parents living in present-day eastern Ukraine, Barr was only a toddler when her father died. When Barr was 4, the Nazis apprehended her and her mother and put them on a train headed for the Belzec extermination camp in Poland. She escaped by jumping from the train but watched her mother fall to her death. Barr experienced many more horrors during World War II and then as a refugee before finding asylum in Israel at age 12. There, she excelled as a student, earned a nursing degree, and married Isaac Barr, then a medical student. They raised a tight-knit family, which Barr prized as her ultimate victory over the Nazis.
“My mother was fiercely proud of her Jewish heritage and having beaten unbelievable odds,” Eliav Barr said. “Keeping history alive was imperative to her.”
“Miriam loved books and libraries, and she used education to lift herself out of hardship and build a fulfilling life,” Koulogeorge said. “Eliav and I are thrilled to support an area that was so close to her heart. We hope the Miriam Barr Librarian will inspire the next generation of students to follow Miriam’s lead and chart their own paths through learning.”
About Paul Koulogeorge and Eliav Barr
Paul Koulogeorge has been a steadfast donor to WashU Libraries since 1992. Today, he and Eliav Barr are sustaining charter members of the Danforth Circle chair level, a new recognition society reserved for alumni, parents and friends who give at the highest level to WashU’s Annual Fund. The couple’s generosity also extends to the Paul Koulogeorge and Eliav Barr Fund, an endowment they created in 2014 to provide ongoing collections support. Koulogeorge has served on the Libraries National Council since 2015 and is in his second term as chair. In addition, Koulogeorge is chair of the university’s Philadelphia Regional Cabinet and is an ambassador for With You: The WashU Campaign. Koulogeorge spent 35 years as a marketing executive, retiring as vice president of marketing, advertising and public relations from The Goddard School.
Eliav Barr has come to know WashU through his husband. Barr is the senior vice president of global clinical development and chief medical officer at Merck Research Laboratories, where he has worked for 30 years. Several of Barr’s mentors, including Roger M. Perlmutter, MD, PhD, and Dean Y. Li, MD, PhD, are WashU Medicine graduates. Many members of his research team also are WashU alumni.
