This collection contains papers of Abraham Moshe Bernstein, a renowned cantor, choir master, composer of Jewish liturgical and secular music, music teacher, musicologist, writer, and translator. The bulk of the materials consists of Bernstein’s liturgical compositions and arrangements in both published and manuscript form, as well as a substantial collection of manuscripts and published works by various composers and arrangers. The materials include Hasidic folk songs and melodies, religious songs, Jewish hymns, popular songs, children’s songs, operettas, liturgical pieces, and musical exercises for students; choral volumes and partbooks; unidentified and fragmented musical manuscripts; manuscripts of Bernstein’s own writings; personal correspondence; a photo of Bernstein on his deathbed; secular and religious songs, Sabbath hymns, Hasidic folk songs and melodies, assembled by Bernstein for the S. Ansky Jewish Historical Ethnographic Society in Vilna.

The collection contains materials pertaining to the life and work of Abraham Solomon (Salo) Weissman(n). Materials in this collection include official documents, correspondence, and photographs. Most of the materials pertain to everyday life in pre-war Germany, as well as the struggle to help people escape the country during the war.

The bulk of the collection contains documents generated by the Judenrats of the Vilna ghetto during Nazi occupation. The Yiddish poets Abraham Sutzkever and Szmerke Kaczerginski, interned in the Vilna Ghetto before escaping to the forests as partisans, were instrumental in the removal of this collection from Vilna and its subsequent transfer to the YIVO Archives in New York. The collection is therefore named in their honor.

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.

This collection contains materials collected and created by Albert Phiebig in the course of his genealogical work. It primarily documents the history of the Phiebig family and related families, but also contains original materials from his ancestors and genealogical tables of other German-Jewish families, as well as other genealogical material and a few personal materials.

The American Jewish Committee Records, Domestic and Geographic Files consists of materials created by executive offices, departments, local offices and chapters of the committee concerning a variety of matters, primarily Jewish civil and religious rights, integration, Jewish communal organizations and communal issues. However, materials found in this collection encompass other civil, racial, and religious minority groups as well. The records consist of briefs, conference proceedings, correspondence, legal documents, memoranda, minutes of meetings, printed materials, reports, resolutions, statements, studies, and surveys.

The Arno Kornhauser Collection includes documents pertaining to the Kornhäuser and Klein families in Kraków and Berlin, including their business dealings and role in the Jewish community.

This collection contains materials of genealogical research from six different families. They include: genealogical information, photographs, birth, death and naturalization records, family sheets listing basic biographical information as well as census records and passenger manifests.

The collection consists of more than 300 autobiographies and supplementary biographical materials, such as correspondence, diaries, and documents collected by YIVO in the interest of Jewish youth research. The autobiographies were assembled through public competitions in 1932, 1934, and 1939 directed at Jewish youth aged 16-22. The collection also contains records of the contest, including lists of the contestants, correspondence with them, reports and clippings.

The collection contains documents of Ernst Beiner and his family, including documents pertaining to his studies and work in pharmacy and dentistry, family photographs, and a file of material regarding his restitution claim against Germany after World War II. Also included are documents of the family of Biener's wife Fanny Beiner née Karpf.

The Papers of Benjamin Nadel (historian of Jewish communities in the Caucasus and Eastern Europe), including research papers, personal and professional correspondence, and documents on the administration of the Jewish Labor Bund.

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.

Bernhard Kahn dedicated 50 years of his life to welfare activities in order to help distressed Jews. Among others he worked for the Hilfsverein der deutschen Juden, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Comittee and the American Joint Reconstruction Foundation .The collection contains personal as well as professional correspondence, articles on Bernhard Kahn’s work and biography, lectures and speeches by him and a number of official documents such as letters of consignment, citizenship papers and educational and professional certificates.

This collection primarily includes documents related to the Blum family’s immigration to the United States from Vienna, Austria. The materials include correspondence, passports, emigration records, a marriage certificate, a U.S. Army Safe Conduct pass, identity cards, employment records, school report cards, and university enrollment records.

This collection contains material on the related Kassel and Bruch (Bruck) families as well as on the immigration experiences of Fritz Kassel. Included among the collection are correspondence, manuscripts, clippings, notes, family trees, and a few publications.

This collection contains vital and educational records of Charlotte Hillburn (born Liselotte Wiener) and her family. It also contains materials about Jews in Gleiwitz, Upper Silesia (today Gliwice, Poland).

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.

David Friedman (Friedmann; 1893-1980) was an artist in Berlin. During the Nazi Holocaust, he was incarcerated in the Lodz Ghetto and Auschwitz. He resumed his artistic career immediately after the war and then immigrated to the United States. His papers include artwork, memoirs, and essays focusing on his experiences in the Holocaust.

This collection contains materials collected by David Trotsky relating to the Jewish community of Belgium in the inter-war period. Materials include printed documents, posters, reports, meeting minutes, and newspaper clippings, mainly pertaining to the Jews of Brussels and Antwerp.

The collection is comprised of photographs of various provenances related to the lives of Jewish displaced persons (DPs) in the period immediately following the Second World War, from 1945 to 1952. The photographs pertain to DP camps and communities in the Allied occupation zones in Germany, Austria, and Italy, primarily those established by the American and British military, and administered by the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, and, later, the International Refugee Organization. Diverse aspects of daily life among the DPs are depicted, such as school, work, recreation, and vocational training, including many activities sponsored by Jewish voluntary organizations, especially World ORT and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. Also depicted are cultural activities such as theater, children’s performances, Jewish holiday celebrations and parades, and commemorative events honoring those who died in the Holocaust. The photographs capture leaders of the Jewish DP zonal and camp committees, DP police, and Zionist living collectives (kibbutzim), as well as notable military, political, and cultural personalities of the period, such as Lucius D. Clay, Fiorello LaGuardia, David Ben-Gurion, Yitzhak Gruenbaum, and H. Leivick. The photographs also reflect political and historical developments, including the major congresses of the DP leaderships in Germany, Austria, and Italy; protest demonstrations concerning British policies regulating immigration to Palestine; and events held upon the founding of the state of Israel in 1948.

This collection of posters includes approximately 1,000 rare or unique items pertaining to over 100 displaced persons (DP) camps and centers in Germany, Austria, and Italy, dating primarily from 1946 to 1952. Comprised of approximately 60% handpainted and 40% printed items, it includes posters produced by diverse Jewish groups within individual camps, such as administrative and cultural committees, sports clubs, Zionist and religious groups, and landsmanshaftn; as well as organizations active throughout the camps, including the Jewish central committees in the respective countries, the World ORT Union, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, the Jewish National Fund, and the Jewish Agency. A small number of items also document activities of the revived Jewish communities in the city centers of Munich and Vienna. Many of the posters use not only language but also color, graphic design, and pictorial and figurative elements to engage their audience with calls to entertainment, lectures, protests, and commemorations.

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.

This collection pertains to the life of Doris Rauch (née Perlhefter), her uncle Norbert Troller, and fellow Holocaust survivors Oscar Bittner and Oscar Jellinek. It encompasses government documents and Rauch’s identification forms issued by the United States and Czechoslovakia, as well as her correspondence relating to family and Holocaust history in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Included are photographs of friends and family engaged in recreation or as posed portraits, the great majority in black and white. Authored by Norbert Troller himself are a memoir manuscript and family tree denoting those members killed during the Holocaust.

This collection documents the life of Eduard Rudnicki, also known as Eli Rottner, a follower and friend of Constantin Brunner. Throughout his life he was devoted to spread Brunner's and Spinoza's philosophy. This collection shows not only his personal and intellectual life, but exposes his relationship to Brunner, to the Brunner circle and the Internationaal Constantin Brunner Instituut in The Hague. Correspondence between Rudnicki and Brunner and several other known Brunnerians are included, as well as a large amount of manuscripts and newspaper clippings written by Rudnicki and others about and dedicated to Constantin Brunner and Baruch de Spinoza. There is also a photo collection of Rudnicki, Brunner and his circle to be found.

This collection contains restitution case files for survivors of occupation and internment during World War II. The case files concern restitution for lost personal property, lost businesses, back pensions and immigration costs. The bulk of these claims sought restitution for injuries and medical conditions contracted during internment.

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.

This collection describes the private and professional lives of Elisabeth Gay and her husband, the businessman Joseph Gay, who came to the United States from Austria in 1939. Topics present in the documents found here include Austria of the 1930s, America during World War II, the economies of several South American countries, and restitution for the Gays' Austrian property. Documents include extensive correspondence, publications, notes and manuscripts, reports, scrapbooks, and photocopies.

This collection primarily consists of correspondence to Pepi Cypres from her siblings. It also contains other Cypres family correspondence; vital and travel documents; contracts and receipts concerning the family home in Cracow; and archival and genealogical research about the family. An item-level inventory is found in the folder 11.

This collection contains the papers of Ernest W. Michel, Holocaust Survivor Journalist and public speaker,including clippings of newspaper articles written by and about Michel, correspondence between Michel and many important Jewish and political figures and autograph files, which Michel collected. Many of these files concern Michel’s Holocaust experiences, speaking engagements, the World Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors, and Michel’s work with the United Jewish Appeal.

The Ernst Heumann Family Collection documents three generations of this family, including members of the Messer, van Gelder, Oppenheim, Haas, and related families. Much of the collection centers on how the businessman Ernst Heumann and his wife Hedi née Messer established themselves in the United States and built their family, although documentation on their early lives in Germany and their emigration is also present. Although the bulk of the collection consists of the family's extensive personal correspondence, official and personal documents are also a central part of the collection. The collection contains correspondence; official documents; educational documents; family writing including poems, essays and short stories; travel memorabilia; some immigration papers; legal documents; Ernst Heumann's business correspondence and papers; family trees; and other documentation.