The collection includes memoirs, poems, notes, correspondence, photographs and clippings pertaining to Miriam Merzbacher-Blumenthal, to her husband Peter and to her mother Ilse Blumenthal-Weiss.'Materials concentrate on the 1940s, when Miriam Merzbacher-Blumenthal and her mother Ilse Blumenthal-Weiss lived in Amsterdam and New York, as well as on correspondence from the 1950s and 1960s.

The Nadelmann and Wolff Families Collection provides documentation about members of the Nadelmann, Wolff, Lewinsohn, and Kann families, including details on their professions, early lives, the towns from which family members derived, and including details on the emigration and deportation of family members. The collection consists of family correspondence, photographs, genealogical research, and research on family members' hometowns.

This collection consists of documents of the Nothmann family, including personal correspondence and official documents, such as passports and certificates. A lot of the material is about or from the time of the Nazi persecution.

This collection consists of photographs and negatives of World ORT conferences and congresses, various individuals connected with ORT, and ORT vocational programs and activities, including in Displaced Person’s camps, in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Cuba, and North and South America.

This collection contains documents relating to David Pinski’s role as a Yiddish writer, playwright, essayist, translator, editor, literary critic, and author of novels, plays, short stories, essays, and poems. There is personal and professional correspondence, manuscripts of novels, plays, poems, essays, and articles, translations of Pinski’s works into English and Russian, lectures made on various occasions, personal documents and photographs, programs, notes, and newspaper clippings. These materials demonstrate Pinski’s important role in Yiddish drama and literature, Jewish community life and Yiddish cultural institutions.

The Grigori Gurevitch Papers consist of materials pertaining to his involvement with the revolutionary movement in the Russian Empire and abroad. The bulk of the collection consists of Gurevitch’s manuscripts on politics, history of Kiev, anti-Semitism, Russian political immigrants, and Jewish revolutionaries, notes, and drafts and also includes correspondence, small amount of clippings, receipts, two petitions, and a photograph

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.

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

The collection contains the papers of Nachman Blumental (1902-1983), a Polish-Jewish historian, scholar, and philologist, who after surviving the Holocaust in a non-German occupied part of the Soviet Union travelled around Poland collecting documents and materials related to ghettos, camps, sites of mass murder, and Holocaust survivors. These materials include, among others, survivor testimonies, witness accounts, original Nazi administrative documents, songs, poems, jokes, parodies, folklore, and children’s schoolwork written during the war, oftentimes in camps and ghettos, as well as Blumental’s extensive notes on Nazi terminology and distinct terminology used by Jews in camps and ghettos. The collection consists of correspondence, published and unpublished articles by Nachman Blumental and other individuals, newspaper clippings, research notes, Nazi documents, and dictionary and bibliography note cards.

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.

The Rachel Wischnitzer Collection contains correspondence, lecture notes, photographs, lantern slides, and negatives documenting Rachel Wischnitzer’s career as an art historian, curator, professor, consultant, and author. Also included are correspondence, records, and photographs pertaining to her husband Mark Wischnitzer’s work as a historian, editor, and Secretary General of the Hilfsverein der Deutschen Juden.

This collection contains the records of the Union of Jewish Student Associations in Germany (Yiddish: Farband fun di Yidishe Studentn Fareynen in Daytshland; German: Verband Jüdischer Studentenvereine in Deutschland), an umbrella organization of associations of East European Jewish students who were pursuing their education in cities throughout Germany in the 1920s. Along with the Union's records are the records of two of its affiliate associations, the Jewish Student Association in Berlin and the Jewish Student Association in Jena. The student associations and the umbrella organization that they founded aimed to further Jewish cultural life among members; to provide material assistance to members in need; and to advocate for the interests of members vis-à-vis state and academic authorities. Included are administrative records such as bylaws, minutes, and announcements; materials documenting membership meetings of the Berlin association and conferences of the umbrella organization; petitions and correspondence from members concerning financial aid; materials documenting libraries maintained by the students, and other activities; and general correspondence. Among the correspondents are Jewish charitable and social-welfare organizations that contributed to the support of East European Jewish students through the student associations, including the Yidishe Velt-Hilfs-Konferents (Conférence Universelle Juive de Secours, Paris), the Verband der Russischen Juden, the Hilfsverein der Deutschen Juden, and the Zentralwohlfahrtsstelle der Deutschen Juden, as well as the Jewish Community of Berlin, and Jewish communities in other cities in Germany. The collection also includes a relatively small amount of materials of mixed provenance documenting the activities of other associations and umbrella organizations of East European Jewish students, both in Eastern Europe and the West, the greatest portion related to interwar Poland, especially Vilna.

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.

This collection contains material by and about the family of German-Jewish physician Richard Koch, collected by his daughter Naomi Laqueur. In the 1930s Richard and Maria Koch and their five children left Germany for the Soviet Union, Israel, England, and the United States. The bulk of the collection consists of correspondence sent to Laqueur from her parents and her siblings. Spanning the 1930s to the 1970s, the letters paint a rich portrait of the differences in mid 20th-century life in the Soviet Union, Israel, England, and the United States. Additional correspondence includes letters from Laqueur’s friends and extended family, and correspondence between other family members. The collection also documents Richard Koch’s professional activities as a physician, and additionally contains some of his poems and portions of a memoir. It also has materials about friends and relatives, a collection of Alfred Koch’s love poems from the 1910s, and photographs.

The Salomons-Fox family collection documents the lives of various family members of the extended Salomons-Fox family. Topics of the collection are the education; the emigration or attempted emigration to the United States, the establishment of a new life in America; and the professional career of the individuals represented in the collection. An extensive amount of the collection focusses on the artistic career and life of Dave Fox. Also included are papers pertaining to the circus artist and actor, Jackie (Leo) Gerlich, who appeared in the 1939 movie “The Wizard of Oz."

The Stanton Family Collection contains documents, correspondence, and photographs representing several centuries of Henry Stanton’s German-Jewish ancestors from the Sobernheim, Hinrichsen, Bütow, Bendix, Reiche, Abraham, Goldschmidt, Bleichröder, and Mond families. Family histories by Stanton based upon these materials are also included.

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 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.

The Vilna Collection represents fragmentary materials that were part of the original YIVO Archives in Vilna before WWII. The collection includes a wide array of materials dealing with a great variety of aspects of Jewish life in the Pre-revolutionary Russian Empire and post-revolutionary Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, and Soviet Russia. The Collection consists of personal correspondence, official correspondence with organizations and governmental institutions, financial and statistical reports, minutes of meetings of Jewish communal and political organizations, bibliographic materials, including card catalogues and bibliographies. Also included here are vital documents, such as birth certificates and birth registers, affidavits, certificates, diplomas, and travel documents. Additionally, there are petitions, resolutions, appeals, printed materials, manuscripts, lists, and questionnaires. There is a wealth of materials dealing with Jewish book trade and publishing, youth and sports organizations, education, Jewish communal life, and political activities.

This collection consists primarily of the research material underlying Werner Frank's genealogical work, "Legacy: the saga of a German-Jewish German family across time and circumstance" (2003, Avotaynu Foundation). It contains correspondence with distant relatives and genealogical researchers, copies of archival documents, and family trees relating to the following German-Jewish families from Baden: Frank, Regensburger, Heinsheimer, Oppenheimer, Furth, Wimpfheimer, Eppinger, Ottenheimer, Wolf (paternal) and Weingartner, Gutmann, Herz, Blum, Geismar, Auerbach, Auerbacher, Uffenheimer, Günzberger, Weil (maternal).

This collection documents the personal lives of Werner Weinberg’s immediate family and his in-laws, Hans and Rosa Halberstadt, as well Weinberg’s efforts to preserve the memory of the German Jews and the Jews of his hometown Rheda in particular as well as a limited amount of materials documenting his professional activities as a writer.

The Wladimir G. Eliasberg Collection documents the lives of the members of the Eliasberg family and to a lesser extent professional activities of Wladimir Eliasberg. The collection consists of personal correspondence, writings, vital and professional documents, and printed materials.