Vilnius (Lithuania)

The materials in this collection document the activities of a wide range of organizations and individuals whose materials were donated to or collected by the YIVO Archives in Vilna before the war, and the activities of YIVO itself. They include documentation on Jewish communal and cultural life in Poland, Lithuania, Russia, and in other communities around the world.

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.

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 collection is of a fragmentary nature, and consists of miscellaneous materials that pertain to the role and activities of the Vilna Chief of Police in the everyday life of the city and province of Vilna, and to the relationship between the Vilna Chief of Police and other police, military and civil organs in the Vilna province. Most of the documents in this collection, which covers the tsarist period from the 1830s to 1918, were assembled during the latter part of the nineteenth and early part of the twentieth century

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.