The Lotte Fairbrook Memoirs describe Mrs. Fairbrook's life from its beginnings in Hamburg, Germany (1898) through her emigration to Palestine (1933) and then to the United States(1938).

Lotte Cohn Fairbrook (1898-1996) was the daughter of a well-to-do banker in Hamburg, Germany. She attended Gertrud Baumer's Women's School of Social Work in that city. In 1920 Lotte Cohn married Alvin Schoenbach, a banker of Hildesheim, Hanover. The Schoenbachs had four children (1922-29), Erika, George, Paul and Helmut. In 1924 they moved to Berlin. There Alvin Schoenbach collected miniature paintings. With the rise of anti-Semitism in Germany, the Schoenbachs resolved to emigrate to Palestine. The sale of one of Schoenbach's miniatures financed their trip and they arrived in Tel Aviv in 1933. The parents found that Palestine's climate and social conditions were not to their liking, however, and they soon planned to emigrate to America. During this period, Alvin began collecting postage stamps and the sale of a portion of his collection helped finance their perilous trip to America via Yugoslavia (1938). After their arrival in the United States, the Schoenbachs translated their German name as "Fairbrook." Alvin Fairbrook continued in the stamp collecting business in New York City. He died in 1962. Mrs. Fairbrook remained in New York until 1982, when she moved to Stockton (Calif.) to be near her sons, George, a computer programmer with Atkinson Computer, and, Paul, Director of Auxiliary Services at the University of the Pacific and, later, Commissioner of the Port of Stockton (Calif.).

Collection is open for research.