News & Features

In January 2013, YIVO launched the Guide to the YIVO Archives at www.yivoarchives.org. The web site, created with funding from the Kronhill Pletka Foundation, presents descriptions of over 1,800 YIVO Archives collections in a searchable, online format. Collections are indexed by subject term and country and there are detailed finding aids ...

In memory of Herbert Offen, the Offen family has donated a rare Hungarian-Hebrew document to the YIVO Archives. The Jewish community of Maros Ludas, located in Transylvania near the Maros River, had only 53 Jewish families. They could not afford to build their own synagogue and had been praying in ...

This item about YIVO's acquisition of the papers of the noted Yiddish playwright H. Leivick appeared in the July 1960 issue of Yedies: News from YIVO. See description of the Papers of H. Leivick in the Guide to the YIVO Archives. Jewish writers on the occasion of a visit by Yiddish writer ...

On May 18, 2013, an audiovisual installation, Letters to Afar, opened at the Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw. The installation, designed by Péter Forgács, with music by the Klezmatics, was commissioned jointly by the museum and YIVO and is based on home movies from the YIVO ...

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 ...