The collection documents American Jewish Committee’s efforts to combat all forms of discrimination against the Jews in the United States. Additionally, there are materials pertaining to AJC’s work regarding other minority groups in the United States. The collection offers researchers a unique chance to see how and what was done prior to the changes in public opinion and civic and legal laws. The American Jewish Committee Records, Subject Files consists of materials created by executive offices, departments, local offices and chapters of the Committee concerning a variety of matters; foremost Jewish civil and religious rights, immigration, and the Holocaust.

The collection consists of materials relating to Jewish religious life in Europe from the 1830s to the 1930s. Topics include: marriages, births, divorces, deaths, bar mitzvahs, holidays, the Sabbath, daily customs, ritual slaughter (shehitah), ritual baths, mezuzahs, prayers, rabbis. Items include: marriage contracts, divorce deeds, wedding invitations, birth announcements, bar mitzvah speeches, New Year's cards, correspondence, photographs.

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 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 Educational Alliance functioned as a settlement house on New York’s Lower East Side beginning in 1889, eventually evolving into a community center in the 1920s. The Educational Alliance Records most comprehensively document the aims and activities of the Educational Alliance following WWII and into the 1960s, beginning with Mordecai Kessler’s tenure as Executive Director in 1945. However, meeting minutes and legal documents date back to 1879. Materials include minutes, correspondence, individual records, newsletters, photographs, announcements, deeds, clippings, reports, and financial records.

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.

The collection contains play manuscripts, programs, playbills, posters, photographs, correspondence, agreements, scrapbooks, clippings, printed ephemera, and memorabilia relating to Yiddish theater primarily in the early twentieth century, especially the interwar period. Also included are items of printed ephemera related to Yiddish film, Hebrew theater, and a broad range of Jewish performers, including cantors, singers and dancers. Geographically, the materials originate predominantly in Poland and other parts of Eastern Europe, including parts of the Russian Empire and, later, the Soviet Union; and, to a lesser extent, the United States, especially New York City. Also included are materials from Western Europe, Palestine (Eretz Israel), South America, and other regions around the world. Among the theater personalities represented in the collection with significant amounts of material are Herz Grossbard, David Herman, Joseph Winogradoff, Rudolf Zaslavsky, Zygmunt Turkow, Jonas Turkow, Moyshe Lipman, Ida Kaminska, and Esther Rachel Kaminska. The theater groups best represented include the Varshever Yidisher Kunst-Teater (VYKT; Warsaw Yiddish Art Theater), founded by Zygmunt Turkow and Ida Kaminska; the Vilna Troupe; Yung Teater / Nay Teater (Warsaw; Vilna), under the direction of Michael Weichert; the Moscow State Yiddish Theater (known by its Russian acronym "GOSET"); Maurice Schwartz's Yiddish Art Theatre, of New York; and the Hebrew theater "Habimah." A wide variety of other professional as well as amateur theater groups are represented with smaller amounts of material.

This collection contains 147 photographs of the city of L’viv, Ukraine (formerly Lemberg, Austria-Hungary; Lwów, Poland; L’vov, Russia). The photographs were taken by an unknown photographer(s) at various times during the period ca. 1890 through the 1930s. Three photographs are from the post-1945 years. The majority of the photographs were developed from glass negatives between 1987 and 1991. These negatives came to the attention of Evgenii Lendon in the 1980s, and Lendon preserved the images by making large, exhibition-quality prints from the negatives.

This collection contains the minutes, correspondence and financial records of the I.L. Peretz Yiddish Writers’ Union from its founding in 1915 until 1973. Among the correspondence is a fair amount concerning the Fund for Jewish Refugee Writers, unions and union grievances, requests for aid from Jewish writers and activists in New York and abroad, and labor disputes and strikes.

Photographs of Jewish landmarks around the world, taken by Roth during his travels, including images of monuments and memorials to the Holocaust.

Predominantly printed matter relating to the economic, political, cultural and religious life of Jews in Cuba. Materials from organizations: Zionist groups, youth groups, cultural institutions, communal welfare organizations, groups for World War II refugees, landsmanshaftn, ORT. Records of an archive-museum of Jewish life in Cuba, organized by the JDC in Havana. Photographs of Jewish life in Cuba.

The Lithuanian Jewish Communities Collection is comprised of documents relating to Jewish cultural, religious, social, political, and economic life in approximately 150 towns in Lithuania. The bulk of the collection pertains to the period between 1919 and 1926, when elements of a system of Jewish national autonomy existed within the Lithuanian state, including a Ministry of Jewish Affairs and governmentally empowered Jewish community councils. Smaller parts of the collection relate to the periods before (1860-1918) and after (1927-1940) the autonomy.

This collection contains mainly contest submissions from the 1945-1946 YIVO essay contest for Jewish soldiers and veterans of World War II as well as additional materials sent in by the contestants and administrative information about the contest compiled by YIVO staff members.

125 black and white photographs of Jewish life in Poland during the 1930s taken in some thirty communities. Subjects include: occupations such as coach drivers, street peddlers, and street musicians, and a variety of scenes of life in the streets of Poland's cities and towns. The collection also includes several letters in Yiddish. Localities available: Baranovichi, Berdichev, Biala, Ciechanow, Ciechocinek, Dubno, Falnits, Grodno, Grodzisk, Grojec, Kazimierz Dolny, Krakow, Krynki, Lodz, Lublin, Likow, Mishov, Nasielsk, Ostrovitz, Otwock, Rawa Mazowiecka, Rovno, Rozhishche, Ryk, Shwid, Svisloch, Ushitza, Warsaw, Zyrardow.

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.

The collection consists of the general, personal and professional correspondence of Moses Kligsberg, manuscripts for published and unpublished works, project proposals and outlines, research materials, printed matter and other records relating to Moses Kligsberg's involvement with the Bund and with Jewish refugees from Nazi-occupied Europe, to his functions at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, and to his scholarly interests. Included are Moses Kligsberg's manuscripts on the subjects of Jewish sociology, psychology, youth, and political matters. The collection contains a great deal of YIVO administrative and publicity materials, among others editorial records of the Yedies fun yivo (YIVO News) and YIVO radio programs; materials on the Bund; records of the United Jewish Survivors of Nazi Persecution. Besides the personal documents and both personal and organizational correspondence, the collection also includes original musical compositions, acetate recordings, magnetic reels, and photographs.

The collection documents life inside the Lódz Jewish ghetto during the Nazi occupation of Poland. It consists predominantly of the records of the Eldest of the Jews in the Lódz ghetto, Chaim Mordechai Rumkowski, and of his administration. Included are original correspondence, announcements, circulars, charts, publications, reports, essays, albums and photographs.

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 consists of photographs of OSE programs, OSE conferences and congresses and various individuals connected with OSE and its programs, mainly dating from World War II and the years just following. Many of these photographs are related to the work OSE does with children’s health and nutrition but there are also numerous pictures of leisure activities, care homes, vocational training, and education.

This collection contains the personal and professional papers of Abbo Ostrowsky, including correspondence with many important figures from the art world, several of whom had been students of Ostrowsky at the Educational Alliance Art School. There is also information about Ostrowsky’s career as an artist, including some original artwork, exhibition catalogues, and photographs. These materials show Ostrowsky’s significant influence on modern Jewish art and on the success of the Educational Alliance as an institution.

This collection contains correspondence between Abraham Cahan and many important literary and political figures, as well as Yiddish manuscripts sent to Cahan for consideration in the Forward and notes and drafts of Cahan’s own writings. There are also several articles written about Cahan, before and after his death. These materials serve to illustrate both Cahan’s importance in the literary and publishing fields as well as his involvement in the American socialist and labor movements.

Abraham Charasch Collection documents Abraham Charasch’s involvement with various Jewish political parties and Jewish student organizations in the Russian Empire and abroad prior to the October Revolution of 1917. Most materials collected here deal with the Union of Eastern Jewish Student Organizations in Western Europe and Zionist Socialist Worker’s Party. Included here is correspondence, by-laws, reports, resolutions, minutes of meetings, declarations, circular letters, lists of delegates to student conferences, memoranda, manuscripts, bibliographies, and applications sent to the Swiss Central Committee for the Return of Political Immigrants.

This collection contains manuscripts of some of the earliest Yiddish plays, correspondence between playwright, poet, and director Abraham Goldfaden, the father of Yiddish theater, and various actors and writers, as well as some family correspondence, newspaper clippings on Goldfaden and his impact on Yiddish theater, articles by Goldfaden on a variety of topics, and various other theater materials, such as title pages of plays, programs and song sheets. The collection illustrates Goldfaden’s great and ongoing influence on Yiddish theater.

This collection contains manuscripts of novels, short stories, poems, essays, lectures, speeches, translations, and other writings, correspondence, photographs, and personal documents and materials of Yiddish writer Chaim Grade and his wife Inna Hecker Grade. The collection helps to illustrate Grade’s literary development and impact on Yiddish literature over time, from his earliest poetic works written in Vilna and the Soviet Union, to his prolific and accomplished prose work composed mainly in the United States. The collection illuminates Inna Grade's intellectual and academic prowess, as well as the integral role that she played in the editorial and logistical aspects of Grade's literary output.

This collection contains correspondence between Chaim Zhitlowsky and many important political figures and organizations, as well as manuscripts and other writings, some written by Zhitlowsky and some written by others. There are also notes and other materials from speeches and lectures that Zhitlowsky gave, financial documents, articles written about Zhitlowsky, newspaper clippings of articles by Zhitlowsky, materials from celebrations held in Zhitlowsky’s honor, photographs, excerpts from his works, and various other assorted items. These materials serve to illustrate both Zhitlowsky’s importance in the Yiddish and Russian literary field and his deep involvement in the American and Russian-Jewish Socialist, Territorialist and Diaspora Nationalism movements.

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.

This collection contains correspondence between Horace M. Kallen and many important individuals and organizations, as well as manuscripts, notes and other materials for speeches, financial documents, research materials, academic records, and various other assorted items. These materials serve to illustrate Kallen’s important role in philosophy, education, religion, and politics and his deep involvement with consumer rights, environmental controls, Jewish issues, and civil liberties.

The 8x10 black-and-white photographs are sub-divided into the following topical series: Street scenes of Jewish Williamsburg; the people of Williamsburg; Williamsburg weddings; making a living; holidays; Williamsburg in the Catskills. Essay and captions by George Kranzler accompany the 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 personal and professional papers of rabbi, Hebrew scholar, author, and editor Israel Elfenbein. These materials include correspondence with and relating to congregations, Hebrew periodicals, organizations, Elfenbein’s writings, personal correspondence, sermons, clippings, and manuscripts by Elfenbein and by other writers.