The materials in this collection constitute a semi-random sample of the pre-war archive that was transferred to the Central State Archives of the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic following the liquidation of the Vilnius Jewish Museum in 1949. The collection includes records of YIVO work and activities, financial records, correspondence, and publications; documents about pogroms in Ukraine, and Red Army and Soviet activity in Vilna and Bialystok; and a significant amount of records of socialist, communist, and Zionist political parties, as well as associated newspapers and one-time publications.

The American Federation of Jews from Central Europe Collection consists of the Federation’s office files. This includes professional correspondence, by-laws, materials related to meetings and lectures, newspaper clippings, photographs, meeting minutes, reports, speeches, drafts, financial records, legal documents and forms, materials related to immigration and naturalization, newsletters and circulars, membership records, personnel files, restitution materials, oral history transcripts, and items of various related organizations and synagogues. There are also some personal documents sent to the AFJCE by members of the public.

The collection contains Bernard G. Richards personal and official correspondence, papers from his involvement with the American Jewish Congress and Jewish Information Bureau, published and unpublished writings, publications collected by Richards, articles about Richards and his activities, correspondence and articles from testimonial dinners in honor of Richards, and photographs. Significant correspondents include Joseph Barondess, Louis D. Brandeis, Vladimir Jabotinsky, J.L. Magnes, Louis Marshall, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jacob H. Schiff, Philip Slomovitz, Arthur Hays Sulzberger, Morris Winchovsky, and Stephen S. Wise.

This collection contains various materials related to the Łódź Ghetto which were originally part of the Bund Archives. Materials include memoirs and eyewitness accounts, materials created by the German occupiers, notices from the ghetto administration, documents originating with resistance groups, photographs, post-war articles and newspaper clippings about the Łódź Ghetto, internal ghetto correspondence, and various ephemera items, such as an armband, ghetto money and various work permits.

The Elias Tcherikower Collection documents the professional and personal life of Elias Tcherikower, a scholar, communal activist, and one of the founders of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, and to a smaller extent personal life of his wife, Riva Tcherikower, née Teplitski. Collected here are Tcherikower’s writings, professional and personal correspondence, photographs, manuscripts by other scholars, research materials, printed materials, financial documents, conference and exhibit materials, minutes of meetings, bibliographic materials and personal materials of Riva Tcherikower, née Teplitski, and Chaim Tcherikower.

These records detail the history of the displaced person camps in the American zone in Austria. They include the records of the individual camps as well as political and cultural groups that operated within the camps. The collection primarily consists of administrative records such as reports, correspondence, and lists as well as cultural materials from political, vocational, and cultural groups, as well as personal papers. There are also records of the U.S. Army, UNRRA, and IRO’s actions in the camps.

These records detail the history of the Displaced Person camps in Italy. They include the records of the individual camps as well as political and cultural groups that operated within the camps. The collection primarily consists of administrative records such as reports, correspondence, and lists as well as cultural materials from political, theatrical, and literary groups. There are also a large number of records of court proceedings, centering on accounting for actions taken during the Holocaust as well as the formation of new families in the DP camps.

The Yidisher Artistn Fareyn, or Yiddish Actors' Union, advocated for actors' economic interests while striving to create a professionally run, artistically ambitious, Yiddish theatrical scene in Warsaw. From 1919-1938, its influence gradually increased until it included the majority of actors working in Poland, and collaborated with the most significant Polish Yiddish cultural figures and institutions, including E. R. Kaminska, YIVO, Literarishe Bleter, and the Landrat, or National Council of Class Trade Unions (Krajowa Rada Klasowych Związków Zawodowych). This collection contains records of annual conventions, Executive Committee meetings, correspondence with actors and theaters from Poland and around the world, and membership files on almost 600 actors.

The Irving J. Block Papers are a blend of personal papers and organizational records, documenting the evolution of the Brotherhood Synagogue (Congregation Beth Achim) in Manhattan and Block’s role as rabbi and his involvement in efforts outside of the congregation. The collection is primarily comprised of correspondence, sermons, minutes, notes, clippings, photographs, audiocassettes, and drafts of Rabbi Block’s memoir.

This collection contains correspondence, documents, and newspaper clippings relating to the life and activities of Frankel in the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, as well as in other social welfare Jewish organizations. Includes biographic and bibliographic data; manuscript and printed copies of his writings; speeches on the subjects of health, insurance and Jewish affairs; and miscellaneous personal correspondence, particularly especially with Milton Rosenau.

Mizrakh Yidisher Historisher Arkhiv Collection consists of diverse materials that pertain to pogroms in the period between 1918 and 1921 that took place mostly in Ukraine but also in Belarus, Poland, and Russia. There is a wide variety of topics that are covered in the collection including Ukrainian-Jewish relations during a short lived Ukrainian Republic, Ukrainian-Jewish political, communal, and governmental organizations, Ukrainian government and the role of politicians and military Commanders in pogroms, most notably Symon Petlyura and Ataman Grigoriev, pogroms and its aftermath, military occupation of Ukraine by the German, Polish, Bolshevik and General Denikin’s armies and its relationship to pogroms, Jewish self-defense and relief work. Also included here are materials pertaining to the trial of Sholom Schwarzbard who was tried in France for assassination of Symon Petlyura. The collection consists of of large amount of lists and eyewitness testimonies, correspondence, complaints and petitions, reports and resolutions, statements and proclamations, memoranda and circular letters, conference materials, statues and by-laws, clippings and bulletins, military orders, and photographs.

This collection contains the personal and professional papers of Isaac Nachman Steinberg, a Russian-Jewish political writer, leader of the Left Socialist Revolutionary Party during the 1917 revolution in Russia, People’s Commissar of Justice in the first Bolshevik government, leader of the Jewish Territorialist Movement and of the Freeland League for Jewish Territorial Colonization, and a founding member of the YIVO Institute in Vilna. These materials include Steinberg’s writings, personal correspondence, clippings, journals, meeting announcements, and some photographs. These materials relate mainly to Steinberg’s work with the Freeland League and plans for the large-scale settlement of Jews in various places around the world.

This collection contains the papers of Julian Hirszhaut, a Yiddish journalist and author of several works about the Holocaust in Poland. He collected a great number of historical documents on this topic, including hundreds of eyewitness accounts, which make up an important part of this collection. The materials in this collection relate to Hirszhaut’s important work gathering documents and testimonies of the Holocaust, as well as to his other professional activities as a journalist.

Maxim Vinawer Papers consist of materials pertaining to Maxim Vinawer’s activities as a political and a communal leader. The collection covers the period between 1915 and 1926. These materials illuminate Vinawer’s participation in Russian politics as one of the leaders of the liberal Constitutional Democratic Party (Kadets), his appointment as a Minister of Foreign Affairs for the Crimean Regional Government in 1919, and his activities as a prominent figure among Zionist and émigré groups in Paris. The collection consists of correspondence, circular letters, memoranda, bulletins, clippings, minutes of meetings, essays, manuscripts, drafts and notes

This collection contains papers of Nokhem Shtif, a Yiddish philologist, editor, literary historian, translator, and political activist, and one of the founders of the YIVO Institute in Vilna. The bulk of the materials pertains to Yiddish language, philology, and literature, as well as to the administration and activities of the Kiev-based Institute of Jewish Proletarian Culture, especially the Philological Section, which was directed by Shtif. The materials include manuscripts of Shtif's writings and speeches; correspondence; reports; meeting minutes; departmental planning documents and course programs/syllabi; materials related to Shtif's teaching of Yiddish stylistics courses; newspaper clippings; several manuscripts of articles and research works by other scholars; and notes, transcriptions, and other research materials, including memoirs related to the lexicographer Y. M. Lifshits.

This collection contains the personal and professional papers of historian and bibliographer Philip Friedman. These materials include correspondence with individuals and with organizations, newspaper clippings, subject files, manuscripts of works by Friedman and by others, and some of Friedman’s personal documents. These materials relate to Friedman’s work on the histories of various Jewish communities, particularly those in Poland, and his work gathering source documents about the Holocaust.

This collection documents the lives of Saul Pepper (1910-1979) and his wife Dora née Eisen Pepper (1918-1987); it focuses on restitution, with extensive compensatory financial documents.

Founded in 1969, the American Association for Ethiopian Jews (AAEJ) was instrumental in the international effort to promote recognition of the Beta Israel (known among non-Jewish Ethiopians as "Falashas") by Israeli authorities, and to assist Jewish emigration from Ethiopia to Israel. The extensive files of the AAEJ include case work files, research materials and Jewish artifacts collected in Ethiopia by AAEJ workers. In the wake of the successful evacuation of Ethiopian Jewry to Israel in 1993, the AAEJ decided to disband and voted to deposit its records at the American Jewish Historical Society. Included are correspondence, office files, photographs, slides, videotapes, audiocassettes and other materials which pertain to AAEJ's efforts to raise the consciousness of the American Jewish community about this unique Jewish subculture. The organization's papers supplement those of its founder, Graenum Berger, which are also held at the American Jewish Historical Society.

This collection contains the office records of the American Sephardi Federation. Documents focus on the daily functioning, annual conventions, finances, events, and activities of the ASF. The records consist mainly of correspondence, but also include memoranda, reports, financial records, and other organizational documents, as well as newspaper clippings, publications, and photographic media.

The Association of Jewish Deaf-Mutes in Poland was founded in 1930 in Krakow, through the efforts of Bogumil Liban, as a union of local deaf-mute societies and sports clubs. It was active until the outbreak of war in 1939. This collection contains correspondence and other administrative records of the association.

The Society for Handicraft and Agricultural Work among the Jews of Russia, known by its Russian acronym, "ORT," was founded in St. Petersburg, in the Russian Empire, in 1880. Its aim was the promotion and development of skilled trades and agriculture among Jews, especially through support of vocational and agricultural training. At first operating only as a provisional committee, it received legal recognition in Russia in 1906, and subsequently established local divisions in various cities within Russia and, after the First World War, in Poland, Lithuania, and other countries. An ORT committee was formed in Vilna in February 1919; the ORT Society in Vilna helped found an international umbrella organization, the World ORT Union, in 1921, with headquarters in Berlin (until 1933) and, later, Paris. The collection comprises records of the ORT Society in Vilna that, despite their fragmentary nature, broadly reflect the society's activities from its beginnings until its dissolution by the authorities in Soviet-occupied Lithuania, in 1940. The collection contains administrative records, such as bylaws, minutes, reports, membership records, and financial records; outgoing and incoming correspondence, with correspondents including the ORT Central Committee in Poland, Warsaw (founded 1923); records pertaining to the administration of the society's vocational programs, including its Crafts School, which trained Jewish youth as artisans in the fields of carpentry and locksmithing, and various professional advancement courses for adults, in fields such as electrical installation and tailoring (cutting); records concerning activities related to agriculture in the period 1920 to 1923, apparently reflecting the work of an ORT regional committee based in Vilna (loan applications and questionnaires about Jewish families working on farms, in most cases pertaining to localities in the western part of present-day Belarus); and a few items documenting a credit cooperative society founded by the Vilna ORT Society. Also included is a small amount of ephemera, and two small groupings of ORT-related records with no apparent relationship to the society in Vilna: correspondence of the Arbeterheym (Workers' Home), Riga, Latvia, in 1923, including letters from the Jewish People's Relief Committee, New York, which became affiliated with the American ORT; and correspondence addressed to J. Capitanchik, London, in 1924, from the ORT Society in London, in part concerning his effort to organize an ORT committee in the city's East End.

The Jewish Vocational (Technical) School of ORT in Vilna, known as the Technicum, opened in Vilna (Wilno, Poland; today, Vilnius, Lithuania) in 1921 and remained in existence until 1940. It trained Jewish young people in the fields of mechanics and electrical engineering over a three-year course of study. The Technicum was subsidized by the ORT Central Committee (Warsaw), the Vilna Jewish Community Council, and the Vilna municipality. The school was equipped with laboratories and workshops, as well as a technical library, and published a series of its own Yiddish-language textbooks for use by students. The collection comprises administrative records, including budgets and general reports, school statistics, financial records, correspondence, and files pertaining to students and teachers, as well as materials documenting the curriculum, course scheduling, and examinations. Also included are letters and supporting documents from applicants for teaching positions; student papers; materials related to a graduates' association and a parents' committee; and copies of several of the textbooks published by the school.

Established in 1912 in St. Petersburg by a group of Jewish doctors, lawyers and prominent public figures, OZE sought to create an all-Russian Jewish welfare system with the goal of promoting the study and knowledge of medical and sanitary practices, detecting and curing diseases among Jews, preventing epidemics, and creating living conditions conducive to the normal physical and mental development of Jewish children. TOZ, established in Poland in 1921, remained closely associated with OZE and shared the same program of activities. Because of World War I and its disarraying consequences, especially in the eastern regions of the Polish state, TOZ concentrated its relief efforts primarily on battling contagious diseases and epidemics caused by poverty, malnourishment and the deplorable sanitary conditions of the Jewish population. The collection is of mixed provenance and fragmentary nature, and consists of miscellaneous materials that relate to the activities of OZE and TOZ in Eastern Europe, and to some extent, in Western Europe.

This collection contains the most significant internal records of the Sofia M. Gurevitch gymnasium’s early years, including the official documents giving permission for the founding and expansion of the school. There are also pedagogical materials, including student work and lesson plans, dating primarily from the later period of the school’s existence. These materials illustrate a Jewish school’s relationship with the Russian government before World War I, and the transformation of its pedagogy, as it shifted focus to become a Yiddish-language secular school in the 1930s.

The Yiddish Writers and Journalists Union (Yid. Fareyn fun Yidishe Literatn un Zhurnalistn in Vilne) was active in Vilna from 1916 until 1940. Its membership rose over the years to 47 persons. Union members were employed in a variety of Yiddish dailies and periodicals, and in publishing houses. The Union was dissolved during the Soviet occupation of Vilna, 1939-1941.

The Yidisher lerer fareyn (Yiddish Teachers' Union) in Vilna was a professional association of secular Yiddish teachers, which supported the ideology of the TSYSHO school system. The union engaged in a wide range of activities in order to promote the interests of its member teachers. Its membership, although composed primarily of Yiddish teachers expanded gradually to include teachers from religious and Hebrew schools. Founded in 1915, the union lasted until c. 1940. The records of the Yiddish Teachers' Union reflect its activities from 1916-1940.

This collection contains the records of the Yidisher Teater Gezelshaft in Detroit, a theater guild which aimed to put on Yiddish plays of the highest artistic caliber for the Jewish community of Detroit. It contains correspondence, meeting minutes, financial reports, programs, mailings, and membership materials.

This collection consists of materials gathered by Simon Dubnow, an influential political thinker, educator, writer, activist, and preeminent historian of Russian Jewry. The materials reflect central subjects of his historical research, such as communal organization, persecutions, and Hasidism, as well as pressing issues of his time, most significantly pogroms and the question of Jewish emancipation. Much of the material comprises information meticulously copied and sent to Dubnow by individuals throughout the Russian Empire for the purpose of aiding his research. The collection demonstrates Dubnow's importance in helping to establish the idea of Jewish ethnographic history.

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 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.