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.

This collection contains documents relating to Isaac A. Hourwich’s role as an economist, publicist, statistician, lawyer, author, and authority on immigration, as well as his involvement with the labor movement and the formation of the American Jewish Congress. There are reports, minutes of meetings, memoranda, clippings and correspondence, and manuscripts and articles about Jewish labor, Socialism, Russia, Marxism, immigration, and other subjects. These materials demonstrate Hourwich’s important role in American labor, immigration theory, and political and economic theory.

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 documents of journalist and left-wing political activist Paul Novick, consisting mainly of correspondence, subject files, manuscripts, photographs, and newspaper clippings. These materials relate to Novick’s career as long-time editor of the Morning Freiheit (Morning Freedom), his important role in the worldwide Communist movement, the history of the Freiheit itself, and Jewish and general politics. These materials demonstrate Novick’s important, and changing, role in the history of Communism, as well as his career as a Yiddish journalist and author.

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 contains the personal and professional papers of Shmuel Mordkhe Zygielbojm, a Jewish-Polish Socialist politician, Bund leader, member of the National Council of the Polish Government-in-Exile in London, and a labor and political leader. These materials include Zygielbojm’s writings, personal correspondence, clippings, and some photographs. These materials relate mainly to Zygielbojm’s work in London as well as the worldwide reactions after his suicide.

The Poland (Vilna Archives) Collection is comprised of documents that were amassed at the YIVO in Vilna (Vilnius), mainly as a result of collecting work by the volunteer YIVO “zamlers” (collectors). The bulk of the collection relates to Jewish communities in over 260 cities and towns in interwar Poland (1919-1939). Documents of earlier years are also included.

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 Records of the Forward Association collection consists of the administrative records of the Office of the General Manager of the Forward Association, publisher of the Jewish Daily Forward. The collection contains correspondence, financial materials, minutes, reports, and information related to various anniversary celebrations. These materials serve to illustrate the professional activities of the Forward Association and its General Manager and show the Forward’s importance.

Record Group 1.1, the primary collection of records from the period when YIVO was headquartered in Vilna, reflects the wide range of activities YIVO engaged in from 1925-1941. Founded as an institute for the study of Yiddish speaking Jewry, YIVO grew to become a research institute, library, archive, and graduate program in one. The collection consists primarily of administrative material such as correspondence, financial records, minutes, reports, lists, and newspaper clippings, as well as essays and publications of the Aspirantur, Division of Youth Research, and the Economic-Statistical, Psychological-Pedagogical, and Philological sections. It incorporates material generated by the Vilna office, satellite offices in Berlin, Warsaw, and New York, and by supporters and collectors throughout Poland, Europe, and indeed the world.