Papers of Victor D. Sanua, 1938-2009 (bulk 1960-2005).

The Papers of Victor D. Sanua consist of correspondence, writings by Sanua and others, patient files, student coursework, newspaper clippings, questionnaires, memorial books for Israeli soldiers, bank statements, genealogical records, offprints, mailing lists and labels, newsletters, publications, and photographs and photographic negatives relating to Sanuas career as a psychologist and his work with psychological and Jewish organizations. There is also a great deal of material that Sanua used in his research on mental health and on various Jewish topics, mainly the Jewish community of Egypt, the Middle East and Israel and various Sephardic communities and concerns. A majority of the collection is organized into subject files, some of which may have been used for research purposes. In addition, there are articles and academic papers written by David and Marianne Sanua, Victor Sanuas children. Some of the correspondence is neither to nor from Sanua but instead belongs to family membe rs or colleagues, such as his wife, his cousin Moise Sanua and Louis Levy, the founder and president of the American Association of Jewish Friends of Turkey, among others.Among Sanuas writings are several articles about psychology and Arabs, Jews and the Arab-Israeli conflict as well as articles about how social and cultural differences can contribute to mental illness. Much of his professional correspondence concerns his activities with the International Association of Jews from Egypt, including the 1997 conference at Columbia University and the IAJE newsletters. Sanua corresponded with many important figures in the Jewish academic and communal world, particularly those in the Sephardic community, including Rabbi Marc Angel, Bernard Lewis, and Louis Levy, and with members of the Egyptian-Jewish community, both those who remain in Egypt and exiles in France, Australia, Canada, the United States, and elsewhere.Much of the collection is made up of newspaper clippings and printe ; emails a nd articles that reflect Sanuas main areas of interest, namely psychology, psychopathology, psychopharmacology, Egyptian Jewry, Sephardim, and the Middle East. The materials in this collection date from 1938-2009 with the bulk dating from 1960-2005. The majority of the collection is in English and French, although various documents are in Ladino, Arabic, Hebrew, Spanish, Turkish, Italian, German, and Portuguese. The collection consists of 60 manuscript boxes comprising 30 linear feet. ; Victor D. Sanua, research professor in psychology and scholar of the Jewish community of Egypt, was born in Cairo on July 22, 1920 to a prominent family. Among his cousins were James Sanua, a writer and Egyptian nationalist, and Moise Sanua, who was the secretary to the Chief Rabbi of Egypt, Rabbi Nahum Effendi. Sanuas mother was born in Turkey and his father, while born in Egypt, was of Turkish origin. However, the family held Italian citizenship and spoke mainly French, the language of commerce in Egypt, and Ladino. The family moved to Belgium when Victor was around seven, where they lived for several years until returning to Cairo in 1933. Sanua learned English in order to attend the Lincoln School, the preparatory school for the American University in Cairo, from which he graduated in 1939. After spending several years working at a number of jobs, including the Indian Red Cross, the British Army and the Office of War Information of the United States, he returned to the American University in Cairo and received his undergraduate degree in 1945 and an additional undergraduate degree in 1949.Sanua immigrated to the United States in 1950 and obtained a degree in psychology from Bowling Green University and then his Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Michigan State University in 1956, where he wrote his dissertation on differences of personality adjustment among different generations of American Jews and non-Jews. After interning at New York Universitys Bellevue Medical Center, he became a Russell Sage Foundation Research Fellow at the Payne Whitney Clinic of the Cornell University Medical College and participated in the epidemiological mental health research of the MidTown Manhattan Study. Sanua then became a Research Fellow in Social Science and Medicine at the Harvard University Department of Social Relations and Psychiatry, where he began a cross-cultural research study in schizophrenia.Sanua obtained his first faculty appointment in 1960 at Yeshiva ; established cont acts around the world with Jews from Egypt, many of whom contributed to the newsletter. The Jewish community of Egypt had reached close to 80,000 in the 1920s but was almost completely dispersed in the wake of the founding of Israel and the Suez Crisis in 1956. It is estimated that fewer than 100 Jews remain in Egypt today. This dramatic exodus is similar to those from other Arab and Islamic countries. It is estimated that between 800,000 and 1,000,000 Jews were either expelled or left the Arab countries between 1948 and the early 1970s. In 2005, Sanua published Egyptian Jewry: A Guide to Egyptian Jewry in the Mid-Twentieth Century, a collection of the IAJE newsletters as well as other articles he had written on the history of Egyptian Jewry, including his own experiences.Sanua married Stella Sardell, who was of Syrian Jewish heritage, in 1956 and they had two children together, David and Marianne. Victor Sanua died July 12, 2009, 10 days before his 89th birthday.