Solomon (Shloyme) Krystal (1912-2015)
Shloyme KrystalYIVO’s Board of Directors and staff mourn the passing of Solomon (Shloyme) Krystal, who died on February 2, 2015, just shy of his 103rd birthday.
Shloyme’s long and extraordinary life spanned almost the entire 20th century and a piece of the 21st. Born in Warsaw before World War I, he was the oldest of 4 children. At the end of the 1930s, he worked at the Medem Sanatorium, an educational and health retreat for children and adults at risk for tuberculosis. He survived World War II in the Soviet Union and went to Sweden in 1946, after a short time in Poland.
After he immigrated to the United States in 1952, Shloyme worked in the New York Cloak Joint Board of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union. He and his sister, Hannah Fryshdorf, became involved with YIVO: Hannah as its long-time assistant director and Shloime, around 1980, as a volunteer in the YIVO Archives and a member of YIVO’s Board of Directors.
This involvement lasted over 30 years. As Chief Archivist Fruma Mohrer noted in a speech at an event honoring Shloyme in 2011, “He read through and identified thousands of pages of documents in Yiddish and Polish, representing many linear feet of collections and reflecting a wide range of political and cultural events and phenomena in Jewish life… Many of his assignments in the Archives were monumental in scope, but unlike the average person who would be daunted by the volume and complexity of the work, Shloyme worked systematically and in a focused and well-organized manner, drawing on his rich and sophisticated understanding of Yiddish and Polish Jewish life, as well as on his knowledge of the political and cultural background of the prewar period.” The collections Shloyme organized have been consulted by researchers from all over the world.
Marek Web, who also served as Chief Archivist during Shloyme’s time as an archivist, comments, “Shloyme was an important, positive presence in the YIVO Archives from the very beginning until the last days of his volunteer engagement. He brought in many elements which are critical in understanding this institution and the contents of its collections. Being a witness and active participant in the fateful decades in the life of the Polish Jews—in Poland, the Soviet Union, and in the countries of their post-war emigration—Shloyme possessed a vast, intimate knowledge of changing realities over the decades, and he used this knowledge to fruitful effect in his extensive arrangement and description work on YIVO collections. YIVO, and especially YIVO Archives, owes Shloyme a lot.”
Shloyme is survived by his son Arthur, daughter Helen, and his sister Shifra Mendelsund, his nieces and nephews, extended family, and many good friends.