News & Features

In 1939, Yitzkhak Erlichson, a nineteen-year-old Jew, fled the German occupation of Wierzbnik, his hometown in Poland, for the Soviet Union, where he spent the next four years. His escape placed him out of the reach of the Nazis but did not spare him the ordeal of prison and labor ...

YIVO library intern Netalie Matalon, July 2013. (Photo by Roberta Newman) YIVO’s newest library intern, Netalie Matalon, a former student of Hebrew and English literature, compares her work environment to “a unique Amish quilt-making place, with a lot of updated technology -- like Google, only --YIVOOGLE. Everything here is an art. Every ...

by ROBERTA NEWMAN

Ten years after relocating to New York, YIVO held its twenty-fourth annual conference, the program for which was publicized in advance in the February 1950 issue of Yedies. The wide range of topics focused on Jewish life in the U.S. and Israel, and included presentations on Yiddish dictionaries and the experiences of Jewish children during the war. Among the keynote speakers was Yiddish writer Joseph Opatoshu.

The next issue of Yedies reported on the conference and provided highlights from the program, noting that the Saturday night opening session at Hunter College attracted an audience of 2,500.

by ROBERTA NEWMAN Ten years after relocating to New York, YIVO held its twenty-fourth annual conference, the program for which was publicized in advance in the February 1950 issue of Yedies.The wide range of topics focused on Jewish life in the U.S. and Israel, and included presentations on Yiddish dictionaries and ...

by LYUDMILA SHOLOKHOVA
Head Librarian

The YIVO Library has one of the world’s largest collections of Yiddish theater works from 1850 to 1950, the period that coincided with the flourishing of Jewish theater in Europe and the United States.

In December 2012, YIVO received a mini-grant from the Metropolitan New York Library Council to digitize microfilms of selections from this collection in cooperation with the Internet Archive. In the course of the project, over 600 theater masterpieces, including many exclusively rare editions of Yiddish plays, operettas and comedy skits published in the United States, Canada, Poland, Lithuania, England, Germany, France, Italy, Soviet Union, Argentina, Mexico, Cuba, and Palestine were digitized. These materials are now available online at the Internet Archive at http://archive.org/details/yivoinstitutelibrary.

by ROBERTA NEWMAN In 1939, Vilna was captured by the USSR and then transferred to Lithuanian rule. YIVO continued to operate under a supervisor appointed by the Soviets. In the summer of 1940, control of the city passed to the Soviet Union and, soon thereafter, YIVO was renamed the Institute of ...

Martin Smolin has donated a copy of a letter his father, Jacob Smolin, proprietor of the Textile Yarn Agency, in Brooklyn, received from Utah Woolen Mills in 1920. As an artifact, the letter not only attests to the large presence of Jews in the garment trade, but also to the ...

Jean Kerman via the American Jewish Historical Society has donated several pamphlets and books published in 1943-1944 calling public attention to the Holocaust and Jewish armed resistance against the Nazis, including “Let My People Go,” by Victor Gollancz (London: Victor Gollancz, Ltd., 1943). Victor Gollancz (1893-1967) was a British Jewish publisher ...

A new issue of Yidishe shprakh, the popular linguistics journal published by YIVO since 1941, is now available for the first time in over two decades. Many years in the making, it includes articles by leading scholars in the fields of Yiddish linguistics and Yiddish studies, including Keith Weiser, Simon ...

by ROBERTA NEWMAN In the 1930s, YIVO in Vilna maintained contact with a wide range of scholars and research organizations around the world, as attested to by reports in Yedies. The July 1935 edition mentions the Slavonic Library in Prague, the Polish Sociological Institute, the Commission on Social Relations in Poland, ...