From the Pages of Yedies

by ROBERTA NEWMAN

The YIVO Archives and Library contain many rare manuscripts and books. Some are from YIVO’s prewar collections, rescued from the Nazis by dedicated volunteers in Vilna (Wilno, Poland, present day Vilnius, Lithuania) or recovered with the help of the U.S. Army after the end of World War II. But many others were acquired from YIVO after its relocation to the U.S. in 1940.

The December 1976 edition of Yedies announces the acquisition of a rare first edition of  Dos kleyne mentshele, a book by Mendele Moykher Sforim that marks “the starting point of modern Yiddish literature.” The same article announces the purchase of the manuscript notebooks of Mordechai Gebirtig, a folk song composer who died in the Krakow Ghetto. His song Under shtetl brent (Our town is burning) became an anthem of the Jewish anti-Nazi resistance in Krakow and Warsaw.

Listen to music by Gebirtig.