This collection contains the personal and professional papers of William Edlin, editor of The Day and a prominent Socialist. It includes correspondence with individuals and with organizations, newspaper clippings, manuscripts of works by Edlin and by others as well as translations done by Edlin, and some of Edlin’s personal documents. These materials relate to Edlin’s involvement with The Day, with the Socialist Party, the Workmen’s Circle, various labor and Zionist organizations, literary clubs and activities, and with music, art and drama.

The collection contains the papers of Shalom Schwarzbard (1886-1938), the Russian-born French Jewish watchmaker, revolutionary, writer and activist for Jewish self-defense. In May 1926 in Paris, Schwarzbard assassinated the exiled Ukrainian nationalist leader Simon Petlyura, whom he held responsible for the pogroms against the Jews in the Ukraine in 1918-1921. His trial in October 1927, at which he was acquitted, drew worldwide attention. The collection consists of correspondence, manuscripts of Shalom Schwarzbard's autobiographical writings, personal documents, clippings, and printed ephemera, as well as poems by Schwarzbard's wife Anna and others. Materials in this collection mostly relate to Shalom Schwarzbard's writings, his speaking engagements following his acquittal, and his efforts in the 1930s to organize Jewish war veterans and war victims of the First World War.

The collection has been arranged according to the following broad subject areas: personal affairs; speeches, sermons, and articles, both manuscript and published; the Free Synagogue in New York City; the Jewish Institute of Religion; American Jewish affairs; relations between the Jewish and non-Jewish communities; New York City affairs; United States affairs; the press (both Jewish and non-Jewish); world affairs; the American Jewish Congress and World Jewish Congress; refugees; Zionism; Palestine and Israel; arts and letters; and individual corrspondence of a general nature.