Rejzen, Zalman, 1887-1941

This collection consists of the correspondence of Zalman Reisen, and correspondence to the Union of Yiddish Writers and Journalists in Vilna. In addition, it contains fragments of literary collections which were part of the YIVO Archives in Vilna before 1941 and of materials which originated in Jewish institutions of higher learning in the Soviet Union, specifically the Institut Far Yidisher Proletarisher Kultur (Institute for Jewish Proletarian Culture) in Kiev and Invayskult in Minsk. The collection was formed in the YIVO Archives in New York ca. 1950. The bulk of the collection comprises files on about 600 Yiddish writers from Eastern Europe consisting of autobiographical notes and letters, biographies, bibliographies, manuscripts and typewritten copies, newspaper clippings, commemorative materials, announcements about lectures.

The Records of the YIVO Ethnographic Committee is a sub-group of Record Group 1, Records of YIVO - Vilna. The activities of the Ethnographic Committee consisted of collecting folklore materials, preparing and analyzing folklore questionnaires, corresponding with folklore collectors throughout the world, and maintaining a museum. This collection also includes surviving fragments of the collections of the S. Ansky Jewish Historical and Ethnographic Society which was active in Vilna from 1920 until 1940, and of Invayskult, also known as the Jewish Bureau of the Belorussian Academy of Science in Minsk (founded in 1925 and dissolved in the 1930s). Record Group 1.2 includes both administrative files of the aforementioned institutions and folklore and historical materials, which were gathered in these institutions' archives.