From the Pages of Yedies

As a precursor to the opening of a Peretz Museum, YIVO organized in one of its galleries an exhibition of some of the items that will later be featured in the Peretz Room, such as photographs of the writer and his family, letters, manuscripts, albums, artifacts, rare editions of his books, translations of his works into European languages, etc. Mrs. Helena Peretz attended the May 25th opening as a special, invited guest. Her presence and the exhibition opening provided a lovely, impressive commemoration of the great writer and an opportunity to honor his widow. A crowd of two hundred filled the YIVO auditorium to overflowing, and, when Helena Peretz appeared in the hall, she received a warm, standing ovation. In his welcoming address, Dr. M. Weinreich mentioned YIVO’s resolution, on the 20th anniversary of Y. L. Peretz’s death, to open a room in honor of him, which would display all materials and artifacts related to his life and work. He noted that the realization of this goal had been greatly furthered by the dedication of Mrs. Peretz, who sent YIVO the most precious items left to her by her husband. Z. Reisen then offered the audience a summary of the contents of the special Peretz issue of YIVO-bleter – one of the most important contributions to research on Peretz – and cited several documents and articles from the volume which illuminate key aspects of Peretz as an individual and of his work. N. Veynig discussed the newly discovered notebook of Peretz’s Polish poems from 1874. The audience was then asked to descend to the floor below to witness Mrs. Peretz cut the ribbon at the entrance of the exhibition gallery. All the assembled explored with great interest the exhibition on Peretz. In the course of the next few weeks, the exhibition received a large number of visitors, including [children and teachers] from the Jewish schools.

In addition, a very festive and grand reception in honor of Helena Peretz was organized by the Natural Sciences-Mathematics Gymnasium (Real-Gymnasium) in Vilna.