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.

This record group consists of printed materials and publications, produced by Hadassah projects and departments, Young Judaea, and other Zionist organizations from 1911-2011. Materials in the record group include periodicals, newsletters, greeting cards, certificates, invitations, brochures, pamphlets, catalogs, and other professionally produced printed materials. Besides Young Judaea, projects documented include Hadassah Magazine, the Hadassah Medical Organization, Youth Aliyah, the Jewish National Fund, and Hadassah Israel Education Services.

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.

Raphael Lemkin, an international lawyer, initiated the use of the term "genocide," and succeeded in persuading the United Nations to adopt the Genocide Convention in 1948. Documents include personal correspondence and artifacts; correspondence, documentation, clippings, and articles regarding the United Nations adoption of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment on the Crime of Genocide treaty; and source material for the unfinished manuscript, History of Genocide. Collection also includes photographs, identity cards, articles, papers, essays, clippings, magazines, research materials, term papers, posters, United Nations materials, and microfilm.

The collection contains the records of the ASJ, an organization active in the Boston area, which survives today as Action for Post-Soviet Jewry, as well as those of two other organizations closely related to ASJ: the New England Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry and the Soviet Jewry Legal Advocacy Center. The bulk of the collection is from the decade starting in the late 1970s through the late 1980s. The collection includes large databases on Refuseniks, prisoners of conscience and Jewish émigrés. Along with the database spreadsheet forms there are a large number of individual files. Among these files are materials related to Soviet Jewish refugees in Italy from the time of the Ladispoli crisis of the late 1980s. The collection also includes a substantial number of reports from visits to the USSR by ASJ activists and other travelers cooperating with the Soviet Jewry Movement as well as a considerable number of photographs, posters and publications.

The records of the American Jewish Congress, a national Jewish agency, concerned primarily with Jewish and other minority civil rights, include the constitution, by-laws, and minutes of the Administrative and Executive Committees and Governing Council of the Congress. The collection has materials generated by the National Biennial Conventions, Executive Directors, including Phil Baum and Henry Siegman, and the General Counsel files of Will Maslow, Commissions and the Jerusalem Conferences of Mayors, Regional Chapters, National Women's Division, Business and Professional Chapters, Public Relations, and miscellaneous activities conducted by American Jewish Congress.

This collection contains mainly correspondence between staff of the JDC Landsmanshaftn Department and members of various landsmanshaftn, benevolent organizations of immigrants originally from the same communities, as well as between the Landsmanshaftn Department and the interest-free loan associations (gmilas khesed societies) and heads of the various Jewish communities, mostly in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.

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 collection documents the activities of a human rights non-government organization on behalf of Soviet Jewry and Jews in the Former Soviet Union. Organized by Harold Light in San Francisco in 1967, the group worked to bring the Soviet Jewry issue to national and international attention. The collection contains correspondence, minutes, case files, publications, newspaper clippings, card files of Refuseniks, subject files, audio/visual materials, and information on other Soviet Jewry and interreligious organizations. Also included are materials relating to Soviet Jewish emigration, Cold War relations, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and human rights conditions in Russia and the former Soviet republics.

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 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.

Collection consists of records of the HICEM Office in Prague, documenting efforts to assist Jewish refugees from Czechoslovakia. Records include minutes of National Committee Meetings, correspondence from the HICEM office, including with various aid societies, and extensive individual refugee case files.

This is a partial inventory of the Records of the Jewish Colonization Association. Portion of JCA records described here pertains to JCA activities in Galicia and Russia only. Included here are reports on JCA colonies, cooperative savings and loans societies, agricultural schools, vocational and technical schools, carpentry workshops, mechanized embroidery factories and weaving factories.

The collection includes materials pertaining to the Jewish Defense Organization, a radical Zionist Jewish organization devoted to protecting Jews from their enemies, imaginary and real, using all means possible. Collection consists of correspondence, financial documents, legal documents, such as depositions, subpoenas, transcripts, and a large amount of printed materials. The bulk of the materials consist of a variety of printed materials and materials pertaining to a number of legal cases against various members of the Jewish Defense Organization and the organization itself.

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 collection documents the organization and operation of the Jewish State schools in the Vilna Guberniya as well as some non-Jewish State schools and consists of reports, petitions and appeals, resolutions, correspondence, financial documents, lists of students and teachers, certificates, minutes, and circulars. There are materials pertaining to the Vilna State Jewish Real Gymnasium, Vilna State Jewish School, and other local State Jewish schools. Also included here are materials pertaining to some non-Jewish State schools and to the Commission on Jewish Schools of the Vilna Guberniya

Lithuanian Consistory of the Russian Orthodox Church includes over 190 case files of Jews wishing to convert to the Russian Orthodox faith and consists of correspondence, petitions to undergo conversion, reports, and resolutions of the Consistory, travel documents, lists, receipts, personnel records, certificates, affidavits, excerpts from birth registries, court documents, contracts and other financial materials. Additionally, there is a small amount of materials pertaining to financial activities of the Consistory.

Part of the Lithuanian Kingdom from the beginning of the fourteenth century, and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth from the mid-sixteenth century, Minsk was annexed to the Russian Empire in 1793, following the second partition of Poland. Under tsarist rule, the city became the capital of the Minsk province. From 1920 to 1991, it was the capital of the Belorussian Soviet Socialist Republic (BSSR). At present, Minsk is the capital of the Republic of Belarus. The Records of the Minsk Jewish Community Council, or Kahal, are a fragment of the original archives of the Minsk Jewish community, which dates back to the sixteenth century. Most of the documents in this collection, which covers the tsarist period from the 1820s to the 1917 Russian Revolution, were assembled between the last decade of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century. The collection is of fragmentary nature, and consists of miscellaneous materials that relate to the role and activities of the Minsk Kahal in Jewish life; the relation between the Jewish body politic and local authorities; and between the Jewish body politic and the Jewish residents in the Minsk province

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.

Spanning from its inception and incorporation in 1925 to its culmination in 2002, the Queens Jewish Center collection highlights this congregation's wide-range of religiously oriented and secular educational activities, ceremonies, developments, events, and programs. Predominant in this collection are the reports, bulletins, financial, legal and property records, and meeting minutes. In addition, books, clippings, correspondence, pamphlets, programs, publications, negatives photographs are also contained with in this collections.

The Rabbinical School and Teachers’ Institute in Vilna was one of two Jewish state schools established in the Russian Empire in 1847 to train state appointed (kazënnye) rabbis and teachers for Jewish elementary state schools in the Pale of Settlement. The purpose of these schools was to undermine and replace the traditional kheder system of education. The other such school was in Zhitomir. The state schools were unpopular because of their assimilationist policies. The Vilna Rabbinical School was closed in 1873, but the Teachers' Institute remained in existence until 1914

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.

From the 16th century onward the Jewish community of Vilna was governed by an autonomous administrative body, called the Kehillah (or Kahal). Under the Russian domination (from 1794) the Kehillah steadily declined in power until the institution of Kahal was altogether abolished in 1844 by an imperial edict throughout the Russian empire. The Tsedakah Gedolah which replaced the former Kehillah in Vilna was limited to charitable and religious functions. In 1919, as Vilna became part of Poland, the Tsedakah Gedolah was replaced by an elected New Kehillah (Yid. Naye kehile). This institution was eventually dissolved in 1940 by the Soviet authorities. These are incomplete records of the Kehillah covering mainly the period of the Tzedakah Gedolah, 1844-1918, and the New Kehillah, 1919-1940. Some pre-1844 records are included. Originally part of the YIVO Archives in Vilna, only a third of the collection was recovered after World War II. Additional records of the Vilna Kehillah are in the custody of the Central Historical Archives in Vilnius, Lithuania. The collection relates to all three administrations, although records of the first "kahal" period cover only the years 1800-1844 and these are very sparse. The collection also includes numerous documents of the Jewish Refugee Relief Committee, established at the beginning of World War II under the auspices of the Kehillah. That committee functioned from 1939-1940.

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, also known as the "New Discoveries" at the Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania (MMNL), in Vilnius, Lithuania, comprises documents from YIVO’s prewar archives in Vilna, the Vilna Ghetto, and postwar Vilna, which were newly discovered at the MMNL in 2017. The physical collection continues to be held at the MMNLL.

Included here are YIVO materials discovered at the Wroblewski Library in Lithuania. Materials cover a wide range of topics that include Jewish education, Jewish communities, Jewish religious life, immigration, commerce, persecution, and other topics. The collection consists of correspondence, minutes of meetings, reports, decrees, proclamations, educational materials, certificates, vital documents including birth and death certificates, travel documents, and other.

The Aspirantur, a graduate training program for scholars of Jewish culture, was founded by the YIVO Institute For Jewish Research in 1935. Led by key figures such as Simon Dubnow, Max Weinreich, and Zalmen Reyzen, the Aspirantur educated students who continued to play an important role in the growth of Jewish studies, including Lucy Dawidowicz, Avraham Sutzkever, and Yosl Mlotek. This collection contains research projects produced by the students, evaluations by their professors, and administrative materials produced in the course of running the program, including planning documents, applications, and correspondence.