Jews -- Poland -- History

The Arno Kornhauser Collection includes documents pertaining to the Kornhäuser and Klein families in Kraków and Berlin, including their business dealings and role in the Jewish community.

The collection contains various documents pertaining to the Boernstein-Tuerk family. The collection focuses on Ernst Boernstein (1854-1932), his parents, Ludwig (Levin) Boernstein and Fredericke (née Mayer), and his children Katharina, Ludwig, Walter and Rudolf.

Georg Wiener lived in Oppeln, Upper Silesia (today Opele, Poland) in the 1930s and was a passionate genealogist with an extraordinary amount of knowledge relating to the history of the Jewish community of Oppeln and the surrounding villages, including regarding important personalities originating from the town. The collection includes long and short manuscripts on Oppeln Jewish community history, correspondence between Oppeln community members or their descendents regarding genealogy questions and typed copies of the Jewish community registers for Oppeln and Krappitz including dates of marriages, births, deaths and other events impacting the community. The collection will be of great use to those researching ancestors from Oppeln or the surrounding villages.

This collection contains manuscripts on the history of the Gleiwitz community, with an emphasis on the period from 1933-1945, as well as some original programs and correspondence related to the local Bne Briss (B'nai Brith) lodge and deportation lists.

Programs for festive occasions and an ordenance issued by the community board regarding the kosher meat trade. Two of the programs advertise events of the Verein der Gnesener (Association of Gneseners) in Berlin, presumably an association of former residents of Gnesen.

The collection contains documentation of the Hennigson and related families, including family trees; birth, educational, citizenship, and military service certificates; marriage contracts; wills; wedding and funeral announcements; and correspondence. An antisemitic pamphlet about Hungarian Jews is located in folder 8.

The collection contains documents of the Hirsch family of Thorn, including a citizenship certificate; thank you letter from the Beth HaMidrash/Forschungshaus to Moritz Hirsch; and marriage certificate accompanied by invoices and receipt.

The Society for Handicraft and Agricultural Work among the Jews of Russia, known by its Russian acronym, "ORT," was founded in St. Petersburg, in the Russian Empire, in 1880. Its aim was the promotion and development of skilled trades and agriculture among Jews, especially through support of vocational and agricultural training. At first operating only as a provisional committee, it received legal recognition in Russia in 1906, and subsequently established local divisions in various cities within Russia and, after the First World War, in Poland, Lithuania, and other countries. An ORT committee was formed in Vilna in February 1919; the ORT Society in Vilna helped found an international umbrella organization, the World ORT Union, in 1921, with headquarters in Berlin (until 1933) and, later, Paris. The collection comprises records of the ORT Society in Vilna that, despite their fragmentary nature, broadly reflect the society's activities from its beginnings until its dissolution by the authorities in Soviet-occupied Lithuania, in 1940. The collection contains administrative records, such as bylaws, minutes, reports, membership records, and financial records; outgoing and incoming correspondence, with correspondents including the ORT Central Committee in Poland, Warsaw (founded 1923); records pertaining to the administration of the society's vocational programs, including its Crafts School, which trained Jewish youth as artisans in the fields of carpentry and locksmithing, and various professional advancement courses for adults, in fields such as electrical installation and tailoring (cutting); records concerning activities related to agriculture in the period 1920 to 1923, apparently reflecting the work of an ORT regional committee based in Vilna (loan applications and questionnaires about Jewish families working on farms, in most cases pertaining to localities in the western part of present-day Belarus); and a few items documenting a credit cooperative society founded by the Vilna ORT Society. Also included is a small amount of ephemera, and two small groupings of ORT-related records with no apparent relationship to the society in Vilna: correspondence of the Arbeterheym (Workers' Home), Riga, Latvia, in 1923, including letters from the Jewish People's Relief Committee, New York, which became affiliated with the American ORT; and correspondence addressed to J. Capitanchik, London, in 1924, from the ORT Society in London, in part concerning his effort to organize an ORT committee in the city's East End.

The Jewish Vocational (Technical) School of ORT in Vilna, known as the Technicum, opened in Vilna (Wilno, Poland; today, Vilnius, Lithuania) in 1921 and remained in existence until 1940. It trained Jewish young people in the fields of mechanics and electrical engineering over a three-year course of study. The Technicum was subsidized by the ORT Central Committee (Warsaw), the Vilna Jewish Community Council, and the Vilna municipality. The school was equipped with laboratories and workshops, as well as a technical library, and published a series of its own Yiddish-language textbooks for use by students. The collection comprises administrative records, including budgets and general reports, school statistics, financial records, correspondence, and files pertaining to students and teachers, as well as materials documenting the curriculum, course scheduling, and examinations. Also included are letters and supporting documents from applicants for teaching positions; student papers; materials related to a graduates' association and a parents' committee; and copies of several of the textbooks published by the school.

The collection contains various letters, deeds, and certificates related to Simon Anker.

The Territorial Collection Poland 1 is comprised of documents that were amassed at the YIVO in New York City. The Collection is of a mixed provenance and fragmentary nature. The commonality between the documents contained within this collection is that they all pertain to Jews in Poland prior to 1939. Documents of earlier years are also included. Collection consists of letters, essays, reports, correspondence, and clippings which pertain to the political situation, economic conditions, and cultural activities of Polish Jews.