About the Archive

The Abba Khoushy Archive contains documents from 1919 to 1969 that were collected during the period of Abba Khoushy’s activities in Israel as a public and political figure, as chairperson of the Haifa Workers’ Council and as the Mayor of Haifa during the years 1951-1969.
This is a historical-documentary archive that includes, along with Abba Khoushy’s personal collection, personal collections of institutions, organizations and companies. Some of the documents deal with security, industry, culture, education, city planning and construction, shipping and the sea, strikes, trade union, workers’ rights, relations with Arabs and Druzes, international relations, and more. Many of the documents include speeches, memos, lectures and articles for the press written by Abba Khoushy himself.

The Abba Khoushy Archive began in 1970 as a result of a joint initiative of Abba Khoushy's family, the Haifa Municipality and the University of Haifa. The archive was established in the university within the Faculty of Humanities at the intitiative of the university management.

The purpose of establishing the archive was to centralize archival materials relevant to research on the past and current history of Haifa from different aspects and on various subjects. With the growth and expansion of the archive, it was decided to make the Abba Khoushy Archive the location for archival material on the history of all the cities in northern Israel. The purpose was to prevent the destruction of valuable archival material so that researchers, university and high school students, and anyone interested in the field, could use the materials in the archives.
Eventually part of the archive was transferred to the Haifa Municipality, and in 2005 the archive was returned to the University of Haifa Library, where it currently resides in the Rare Book Room. A project to computerize the archive is under way: in the first stage all the files will be cataloged in the library's Aleph catalog, and in the second stage data will be entered on individual documents in the files. The cataloging will be alongside the physical processing of the material, establishment of preservation policies and creation of a thesaurus. In the future, we hope to digitize the documents for viewing on the archive's website.