The Galveston immigration records document the attempt of the Jewish Immigrant Information Bureau, working in cooperation with several other Jewish organizations, to receive Jewish immgrants through the port of Galveston, Texas rather than New York City. The papers further describe the JIIB's efforts to resettle the immigrants in communities throughout the United States. Papers include ship passenger lists, correspondence, and statistical reports, as well as papers dealing with individual immigration cases.

The Jewish People’s Chorus of Los Angeles was a chorus associated with the Jewish Music Alliance, an organization meant to promote Yiddish folk and revolutionary music, founded by Jacob Schaefer in 1925. This collection contains manuscripts of music performed by the chorus as well as a few performance notes.

The records chronicle the ideology behind the Reconstructionist movement, the founding and activities of the Jewish Reconstructionist Foundation, and its growth and transformation from an ideology and movement into an established American Jewish denomination, Reconstructionist Judaism. The records also document two seminal figures in Reconstructionist Judaism, Mordecai Menahem Kaplan and Ira Eisenstein. Included in the collection are the administrative records of the Foundation (minutes, financial records, bylaws), publications produced by the Foundation including manuscript submissions for the influential publication The Reconstructionist, correspondence, sermons, prayer books produced by the Foundation, syllabi, sheet music, photographs, and speeches, among other material. In the correspondence are letters from Martin Buber, J. Edgar Hoover, and Albert Schweitzer.

The records of the National Council of Jewish Women, New York Section document the organization's community service, advocacy, and supportive administrative, fundraising, membership, and public relations activities from the Section's early years to the present. Included is a large amount of material from the National Organization in relation to the New York Section. This material is dated from 1896 to 1999 and consists of administrative, events, and advocacy matters. The New York Section's community services files include its work on aging, child care, consumer telephone referrals, counseling support, crime prevention, the disabled, domestic violence, early child education, feminism, homelessness, hunger, immigrants, Israel, Jewish education and promotion, literacy, probation, the sick, summer recreation for children and the elderly, and war relief. The Section's advocacy files consist of lobbying efforts for the rights of children, the disabled, the elderly, families, the homeless, immigrants, Israel, and women. The collection is primarily in English, with some Hebrew, Yiddish, German, Greek, Spanish, Chinese, and Italian. Among the types of material are audio tapes, blueprints, correspondence, minutes, photographs, publications, scrapbooks, and scripts.

The National Jewish Welfare Board Military Chaplaincy Records document the evolution and activities of NJWB’s military chaplaincy agency, which was known as the Commission on Army and Navy Religious Activities (CANRA) from 1942 to 1947, as the Division of Religious Activities (DRA) from 1947 to 1953, and then as the Commission on Jewish Chaplaincy (CJC) after 1953, during the Executive Directorship of Aryeh Lev (1946-1975) and Philip Bernstein (1942-1946). The collection also consists of Aryeh Lev’s records during his service as assistant to the Office of the Chief of Chaplains of the Army (1940-1945), as well as Lev’s personal papers. Most broadly, the collection chronicles the role of Jewish chaplaincy and Jewish participation in the U.S. military effort from WWII to the Vietnam War. Subjects addressed include the establishment of Judaism as one of the major faiths in the U.S. military, patterns of observance among service members, and post-WWII relief work by Jewish chaplains on behalf of displaced persons. Materials include minutes, reports, correspondence, speeches, sermons, autobiographical writings, photographs, questionnaires and printed materials.

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.

This collection contains records of the Zukunft monthly journal, which was devoted to publishing political, scientific and literary articles in Yiddish. It contains newspaper clippings, correspondence, meeting minutes, materials relating to conferences and anniversary issues, financial reports, programs, mailings, subscription materials, and typed and handwritten manuscripts submitted for publication.

The Grumach Collection documents the lives of several individuals and families including the Cahn Family, Flora and Olga Glaser, the Josephsohn-Grodzin-Baumann Family, Max Laboschin, Jakob May and Esther Dornitzka. The bulk of the records are correspondence regarding the financial and legal affairs of Felix and Nathan Josephsohn as well as Arthur and Günther Grodzin and Jakob May. Also included are general correspondence concerning immigration matters, personal papers, academic records and real estate records.

Correspondence with family members and with other individuals; correspondence of Weltsch as editor of Juedische Rundschau and Juedische Welt-Rundschau; correspondence on Zionist affairs; personal papers of Robert Weltsch and other family members; manuscripts and other material on Jewish life in Prague; speeches, reports, essays, and journalistic dispatches by Weltsch on Zionism, Jewish-Arab and Jewish-German relations, displaced persons in post-World War II Europe, the Nuremberg war crimes trials, and the founding of the State of Israel; clippings of articles by Weltsch; clippings and manuscripts by others on Zionism and Jewish affairs; records of the Komitee fuer den Osten concerning the situation of East European Jewry at the end of World War I; records of the Verband Juedischer Studentenvereine in Deutschland from the 1920s and of the Jewish student fraternity Bar Kochba, Prague, including reports, minutes, membership lists, and correspondence of its Israeli alumni association; correspondence and minutes of Brith Shalom, an organization which favored Arab-Jewish cooperation and a bi-national state, and Ha-Poel Ha-Zair, a Zionist labor party; correspondence of the Zionistische Vereinigung fuer Deutschland and of Aliyah Hadasha, a German-Jewish party in the Yishuv; papers of Solomon Adler-Rudel; correspondence and other material on the Evian Conference and on emigration from Nazi Germany in the 1930s and from German-occupied Europe during World War II, including reports of the Movement for the Care of Children from Germany; research notes and manuscripts by Adler Rudel for his biography of Baron Maurice de Hirsch; manuscript: "Max Brod and his Age". 1969; lecture on the development of Jewish consciousness in a western, educated, assimilated man.

The Robison Family Fapers reflect various activities of Adolf C. and Ann Green Robison in civic organizations, Jewish communal life, Jewish national and international affairs, and individually in the arts. The collection contains information on the origins of the United Nations; and on aid to Israel before, during, and after the War of Independence. The materials include correspondence, memoranda, minutes, reports, financial documents, newspaper clippings, photographs, diaries, scrapbooks, musical scores, and play scripts.

The Rosenfeld Family Collection comprises several generations of official and personal papers of this family of cantors and physicians. Included are a large number of certificates and other official documents from government and military offices, religious authorities, and academic and professional institutions. There are also a few family letters and essays, notes, family trees and genealogical descriptions and various other material.

This collection describes the professional life of the writer Salamon Dembitzer, who is best known as a Yiddish poet and the author of Visas for America, a novel on the situation of Jewish refugees during World War II. Included in these papers are manuscripts of his poetry, newspaper articles, and novels as well as reviews of his work, correspondence, and biographical information on him.

This collection contains the papers of Sallyann Amdur Sack, “The Godmother” of Jewish Genealogy. In 1980, Sack founded the Jewish Genealogy Society of Greater Washington (JGSGW); in 1984, she organized the First International Seminar on Jewish Genealogy in Jerusalem, Israel; and in 1985, she co-founded AVOTAYNU: The International Review of Jewish Genealogy, known as “The Voice” of Jewish Genealogy research. These papers chronicle Dr. Sack’s groundbreaking work, which ranges from the early 1980s through 2007. The collection contains correspondence, conference and seminar materials, planning and research papers, as well as photographs and audio/visual material.

The Salomon Benedikt Goldschmidt Family Collection encompasses family papers and genealogical information on the family, documenting several generations of the Goldschmidt family as well as the related Porges von Portheim family. Included are short memoirs and diaries along with official and legal documents and two genealogical works with numerous family trees. Other items include account books, newspaper clippings, and a few letters and photographs.

In 1961 Samuel L. Sumberg received a grant from the Leo Baeck Institute in New York to work on a project entitled Jewish Directors of the German Stage. Included in the collection are his notes, writings, correspondence and printed materials related to the subject. This work was not published.

Albert and Bertha Schoolman (married in 1922) were pioneers in American Jewish education as teachers, administrators, and authors; devoted Zionists and active supporters of the State of Israel. Dr. Albert P. Schoolman (1894-1980) was the director of the Central Jewish Institute (CJI), and established the CJI summer camp offshoot, Camp Cejwin, located in Port Jervis, NY. Bertha Schoolman (1887-1974) served as a Chairperson in Hadassah positions including National Secretary and Vice-President, and the Youth Aliyah Management Committee from 1947-1953. Bertha was presented with the State of Israel Fighters Award for her work in Israel and both of the Schoolmans were active participants in Reconstructionist Judaism. Correspondents in the collection include Dr. Alexander Dushkin, Rabbi Mordechai Kaplan, Henrietta Szold, and Otto Frank. The collection contains information on Camp Cejwin, Hadassah, Jewish education, and Reconstructionist Judaism; among the materials included in the collection are: correspondence, camp memorabilia and records, articles and books, scrapbooks, photographs, film and audio tapes.

The collection contains the papers of Shalom Schwarzbard (1886-1938), the Russian-born French Jewish watchmaker, revolutionary, writer and activist for Jewish self-defense. In May 1926 in Paris, Schwarzbard assassinated the exiled Ukrainian nationalist leader Simon Petlyura, whom he held responsible for the pogroms against the Jews in the Ukraine in 1918-1921. His trial in October 1927, at which he was acquitted, drew worldwide attention. The collection consists of correspondence, manuscripts of Shalom Schwarzbard's autobiographical writings, personal documents, clippings, and printed ephemera, as well as poems by Schwarzbard's wife Anna and others. Materials in this collection mostly relate to Shalom Schwarzbard's writings, his speaking engagements following his acquittal, and his efforts in the 1930s to organize Jewish war veterans and war victims of the First World War.

The collection relates to the life of Jewish refugees, mostly of German and Austrian origin, in Shanghai primarily between the years 1939-1948. It covers many aspects of their experience, including political and cultural events, relief and charity activities, and self-help. The collection originated from the YIVO exhibition that was organized and displayed in 1947 in Shanghai and later in New York. The collection consists of manuscripts, minutes of meetings, correspondence, newspaper clippings, and printed materials.

This collection documents Sonia Wachstein's personal life and professional work. It includes personal documents, correspondence, diaries, and photographs concerning her personal affairs as well as her education and professional life as a social worker.

This collection contains correspondence, pamphlets, periodicals, newspapers, press releases, writings, clippings, brochures, fliers, and posters from the era of the Spanish Civil War, and later, documenting American and international fund-raising for humanitarian relief of Republican Spain; American and international public opinion about the war; the participation of Jews in the International Brigades; and reminiscences and commemorations of the war and, particularly, of the International Brigades, in later years. A portion of the material on relief work pertains to trade union activities, as documented in papers of Charles S. Zimmerman, of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union, in his capacity as leader of Trade Union Relief for Spain, in New York City. Other organizations represented include the Medical Bureau and North American Committee to Aid Spanish Democracy; the Spanish Information Bureau in New York; the Friends of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade; and the Israeli branch of the association of volunteers in the International Brigades. There are also autobiographical manuscripts by Benjamin Lubelski and Sigmund Stein, who participated in the International Brigades; and contemporary publications in a variety of languages, including publications of the anarchist-leaning Spanish trade union confederations CNT-FAI.

This collection consists of material relating to the Steiner family of Laupheim, Baden-Württemberg. It contains hundreds of letters between Hedwig Steiner and her sons Julius and Heinrich during World War One. It also includes other correspondence, vital, business, and educational documents, and photographs, as well as a few pages of a late 18th or early 19th-century Haggadah in Hebrew and Judeo-German.

This collection documents the Stern and Fantl families of Vienna, Austria from the mid-nineteenth century through 1980. Materials include personal correspondence, vital records (birth and marriage certificates), immigration and naturalization records, education records, passports, legal papers, contracts of sale for family property, photographs, poems, and Erwin Stern’s personal account of imprisonment in Dachau.

The Steven M. Lowenstein Collection documents professional activities of Steven Lowenstein, writer, researcher, historian, and teacher and consists of manuscripts, printed materials, statistical data, and correspondence. Documents comprising the collection reflect Dr. Lowenstein’s interests in a wide spectrum of topics related to Jews and Judaism, such as modernity and tradition and their influence on the religion and common folks, Berlin Jews of the upper strata, similarities and differences between agrarian/rural and urban Jews, Eastern and Western Jewry, popular and official Judaism, and secular and religious Jews, to name but a few topics.

The Steven Lowenstein Collections documents professional activities of Steven Lowenstein, writer, researcher, historian, and teacher. Documents comprising the collection reflect Dr. Lowenstein’s interests in a wide spectrum of topics related to Jews and Judaism, such as modernity and tradition and their influence on the religion and common folks, Berlin Jews of the upper strata, similarities and differences between agrarian/rural and urban Jews, popular and official Judaism, secular and religious Jews, and other Jewish related topics. However, there is a very small amount of materials related to Dr. Lowenstein’s professional activities other than research and writing.

The Steven Schwarzschild Collection documents professional activities of Steven S. Schwarzschild, researcher, philosopher, rabbi and teacher. It also documents (to a much smaller degree) the personal lives of Steven Schwarzschild and his wife Lily. The collection includes brochures, booklets, clippings, correspondence, notes, off prints, photographs, printed materials, and writings. Documents comprising the collection shed light on Steven Schwarzschild’s education, and reflect various aspects of Steven Schwarzschild’s involvement with Judaism, as leader of Jewish congregations in Fargo, North Dakota and Lynn, Massachusetts; his academic career, research and writings in the fields of philosophy and theology.

The Steven Siegel Collection documents the life and professional activities of Steven Siegel, archivist, genealogist, and an active member of the LGBT community. The collection consists of correspondence, seminar and conference materials, publications, lists, manuscripts, original genealogical research, minutes, official documents, photographs, project proposals, and questionnaires. Materials related to Steven Siegel’s personal life constitute a smaller portion of the collection and consist of personal correspondence, materials documenting his involvement with Cornell University and Congregation Beth Simchat Torah. Materials documenting Siegel’s professional activities include documents pertaining to the Jewish Historical Society of New York, the Jewish Genealogical Society, and the Council of Research Libraries in Jewish Studies.

This collection contains documents and records accumulated by Elias Tcherikower in his capacity as co-founder of YIVO, member of the Executive Office, and Chair of the Historical Section, 1925-1943. It is particularly significant for its records of the YIVO Historical Section, and extensive correspondence documenting the founding of the Institute.

The Territorial Collection Poland 1 is comprised of documents that were amassed at the YIVO in New York City. The Collection is of a mixed provenance and fragmentary nature. The commonality between the documents contained within this collection is that they all pertain to Jews in Poland prior to 1939. Documents of earlier years are also included. Collection consists of letters, essays, reports, correspondence, and clippings which pertain to the political situation, economic conditions, and cultural activities of Polish Jews.

The Territorial Collection, Poland 2 is comprised of documents that were amassed at the YIVO in New York City. The collection is of mixed provenance and is fragmentary in nature, consisting of miscellaneous materials dating back to World War II and its immediate aftermath. The Territorial Collection Poland 2 is a portion of the greater Territorial Collection (RG 116), which incorporates materials that are relevant to over 42 different countries and geographical regions. The overarching theme of the collection Poland 2 is the annihilation of the Jewish life in Poland under the Nazi rule. Chronologically, the Territorial Collection Poland 2 follows the Territorial Collection Poland 1, which pertains to pre-World War II Poland; and precedes the Territorial Collection Poland 3, which pertains to post-World War II Poland.