Jews -- Soviet Union

The collection consists of clippings from English, Yiddish, and German newspapers in America dealing with general conditions in various countries and general topics during the years 1950-1969.

The AVI CHAI Collection contains a breadth of files relating to the administrative and outreach activities of the organization, from its founding in 1984 through 2019.

The AVI CHAI records stored at the AJHS relate to the foundation's activities in North America. The records relating to the AVI CHAI's activities in Israel are stored at the archives of the National Library of Israel.

The records consist of correspondence, reports, minutes, financial documents, digital files, and printed materials that chronicle AVI CHAI’s administrative communication and outreach programming. The collection consists of physical paper records (see detailed breakdown below), born-digital files (including computer files), as well as audiovisual materials such as audiocassettes, microcassettes and DVDs. There are some 35mm slides, but otherwise very few photographic prints or negatives. Of note in the collection are materials that outline the foundation’s research on, and enthusiastic support of, Jewish day schools, camps, teacher training and libraries.

Administration files include by-laws, incorporation documents, and insurance policies, among others.

Board records are comprised of meeting materials, such as minutes and agendas. They document the philosophy, direction and activities of the organization.

Communications files consist primarily the files of Deena K. Fuchs. They include media kits, graphics, working files for annual reports, and other materials.

Files related to AVI CHAI finances include investment portfolio documentation as well as quarterly and annual reports.

The core of the foundation’s history can be found in its Programs files which document the various programs initiated or supported by AVI CHAI. They include detailed files on the foundation’s loans to schools (including building programs) and to summer camps. Also included in this series are files relating to AVI CHAI communications activities, such as media kits, graphics, working files for annual reports, and other materials.

Minutes, United Brothers of the Town of Smila, 1932-1943. Certificate of consolidation, 1962. Correspondence from Smela to the New York landsmanshaft and to the Smiller Benevolent Association in Philadelphia, 1910-1914, 1922, 1931-1932. Lists of relief packages received in the USSR, 1922, 1942-1948. Newspaper clippings. Notes in preparation of the Smeler memorial book. Souvenir journal of the Joint Smela Relief, Inc., 1938. Receipts from the Relief Committee for the Smeler Political Convicts.

Constitution. DKFBA Golden Book and Family Register, 1979. Family magazine, 1925. Souvenir handkerchief of relative's funeral, 1921.

Correspondence relating to Cherniak's association with Yiddish cultural organizations. Letters from Freeland League, YKUF, YIVO, ORT, Canadian Jewish Congress, Yiddish schools, Jewish Labor Committee. Correspondence with individuals: Mendl Elkin, Peretz Hirschbein, Shmuel Niger, Chaim Zhitlowsky.

Joseph A. Rosen was an agronomist and official of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. In the 1920s and 1930s he organized and coordinated relief activities for impoverished Jews in the Soviet Union. Joseph A. Rosen was a director of the American Jewish Joint Agricultural Corporation (Agro-Joint) that tried to develop Jewish settlements and assisted with organization of Jewish factories, cooperatives, schools, and health care facilities. All these subjects are covered in this collection. These are the papers of Joseph A. Rosen in his official capacity as a Director of the Agro-Joint. The collection contains agreements between Agro-Joint and the Soviet government, reports, and field observations of the agronomists and officials of the relief organizations, particularly of the Agro-Joint, technical reports and documentation necessary for development and financial sustainability of the Jewish settlements. Maps and landscape plans are also part of this collection.

This collection documents the time Judah J. Shapiro spent as writer and broadcaster of the radio show “Highlights and Background of the Jewish News” on WEVD in New York City. He wrote and broadcast the show from 1971 until his death in 1980. The bulk of the collection is transcripts of the radio show. The show focused mainly on the politics and current affairs of the state of Israel.

Notes on the Bund, Nathan Birnbaum, Simon Dubnow. Clippings on the Soviet Union and nationalism, 1930s-1940s.

Manuscripts of Baratz's writings on Jewish conditions in Soviet Russia, Zionism, World Jewish Congress. Clippings of Baratz's articles. Baratz's autobiography.

Lucien Wolf (1857-1930) was a diplomat, foreign affairs expert, journalist, and historian. As the secretary of the Joint Foreign Committee of the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the Anglo-Jewish Association (earlier the Conjoint Foreign Committee), Lucien Wolf took a leading role in the efforts of Western Jewry to aid persecuted Jews in Eastern Europe. He was also a delegate to the Paris Peace Conference (1919), where he helped to draft the minorities treaties guaranteeing the rights of Jews and other ethnic and religious minority groups. David Mowshowitch (1887-1957) was Lucien Wolf's secretary and aide at the Joint Foreign Committee for many years and continued to work for the Joint Foreign Committee until the 1950s. The collection consists of the papers of Lucien Wolf and David Mowshowitch, as well as fragmentary records of the Joint Foreign Committee. The material includes personal papers, correspondence, reports, memoranda, minutes of meetings, copies of articles, and press clippings. The documents pertain to the situation of persecuted Jews throughout the world, most notably the efforts of the Joint Foreign Committee of the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the Anglo-Jewish Association to aid the Jews of Eastern Europe, and to the Peace Conference at Paris in 1919 and the minorities treaties. There is also material on Lucien Wolf's and David Mowshowitch's other activities, most importantly Lucien Wolf's career as a journalist and as a historian of the Jewish community in Britain.

Correspondence with individuals, circa 1908-circa 1962. Materials about individuals involved in the Russian revolutionary movement. Materials about Russian emigres, the Menshevik party Narodnaya Gazeta, Socialist Party (U.S.), Jewish Socialist Verband, Jewish Daily Forward, Zukunft, the Rand School. Personal materials.

Correspondence of Mendel Sudarski relating to the publication of the book Lite. Manuscripts, notes, and photographs for the book. Correspondence of Alte Sudarski relating to Jewish refugees in Shanghai 1946-1952, and to food and clothing packages for Jews in Russia, 1950s. Correspondence of Alte Sudarski with Yiddish writers.

Collection contains: correspondence; memoranda; notes; press releases; speeches; resolutions; bills; Congressional Records; House of Representative's reports; articles; newsclippings concerning Refuseniks and the plight of Soviet Jews; and material regarding the Middle East Crisis (1953-1969), Arab Boycotts (1965-1967, 1973), the American Jewish Committee's response to affirmative action programs (1972), and an article outlining Hasidic Jew's treatment by police (1973).

The collection is divided into 5 series: I) Personal Papers and General Correspondence (folders 1-5); II) Journalistic Articles (6-51b); III) Jewish Folklore (52-99); IV) Various Materials (100-105); V) Photographs (106-117).The collection includes Yiddish folkore materials, including notebooks of songs, folk plays, folktales, folk humor, anecdotes, proverbs. Clippings of Litwin's articles relating to various topics, including: Russia, 1917-1930; Palestine and Zionism; towns and cities in Europe; landsmanshaftn; Poale Zion activities, 1915-1928; Jewish occupations; colonization and farming; Jewish holidays; Yiddish theater; education. Poems by Litwin. Photographs of personalities, towns in Europe. Correspondence with Abraham Cahan, Saul Ginsburg, Abraham Liessin, Baal Makhshoves (Isidor Eliashev), Shmuel Niger, Zalman Reisen, Sholem Aleichem, Israel Zinberg. Family correspondence.

Papers of Baron Maurice de Hirsch, including personal documents, 1855-1899. Materials relating to Hirsch's contacts with the Russian government on the founding of Jewish schools in Russia, 1887-1889, including correspondence from the Russian Ministry of Education. Reports, correspondence and other materials relating to the JCA project in Argentina, including reports by de Hirsch and Lowenthal. Records of the founding of the JCA, including Hirsch's correspondence with his lawyers, 1894-1900.

Manuscripts of Yiddish plays. Translations of Sloves's plays into French, German and English. Clippings, posters, programs, letters relating to performances of plays around the world. Photographs of performances. Various materials relating to Congress for Jewish Culture, Paris, 1937. Correspondence with individuals including Simone de Beauvoir, Nathaniel Buchwald, Abraham Golomb, Nachman Meisel, Zygmunt Turkow, Arnold Zweig.

Correspondence with Izhak Ben-Zvi, David Ben-Gurion, Joseph Sprinzak, Rabbinate of Cairo. Report on the Jewish Community in Lebanon, 1956. Correspondence relating to Felix Kersten, personal physician of Himmler. Photostats of Polish underground press, 1940-1945. Manuscripts and notes of a projected book by Shoshkes, Jews in Russia Today. Memoirs by Irene Eskenazi about World War II experiences in Yugoslavia.

Typewritten copies of records of the Polish Government-in-Exile relating to Jewish affairs during the Holocaust period. This documentary survey of the Polish repositories in London covers a wide range of topics pertaining to the situation of Polish Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland and to Polish Jewish refugeees in the Soviet Union and Palestine. The collection is divided into the following subject series: Extermination and resistance. Reports and messages from the Polish underground to London about the situation of the Jewish population, persecutions, deportations, antisemitic propaganda, liquidation of the ghettos, operations of the death camps, organization of resistance movements, uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto. Extracts from 'Reports on the Domestic Situation' issued by the Ministry of the Interior of the Polish Government-in-Exile, 1939-1944. Periodic analysis of the annihilation of Polish Jews. Polish Underground Press. Reports and comments about the extermination and resistance published in Barykada Wolnosci, Biuletyn Informacyjny, Glos Pracy, Informator, Kadra, Kurier, Nowe Drogi, Glos Warszawy, Prawda, Rada Narodowa, Warszawski Glos Narodowy, Wschod.

This collection consists of Naftali Herz Kon's personal and official documents, personal correspondence, and correspondence with literary editors and organizations, as well as manuscripts, typescripts, drafts, fragments, and notes for both literary work (prose and poetry) and historical and biographical essays and reports. The Kon papers confiscated by the Polish government in 1961 and reclaimed by Kon's daughters in 2013 make up the final portion of the collection, and include personal correspondence, published and unpublished poetry, and historical essays.

The papers consist primarily of manuscripts of Szajkowki's works and related notes, documents, and photographs. There are also personal documents and some correspondence. Manuscripts, documents and notes relating to: immigration of Jews in the period 1880-1930; National Refugee Service; USNA; American relief work in Soviet Russia, 1917-1939; American-Jewish relief work in Poland, 1918-1923; Jews in Russia, 1917-1939; Illustrated Sourcebook on the Holocaust, Volume 1; Jews in France; Spanish Civil War.

The papers of Philip Lax document his work with four major organizations: the American Jewish Historical Society, B'nai B'rith International, National Conference on Soviet Jewry, and Ellis Island Restoration Commission. The collection documents the years 1915 to 2008, with the bulk of the material dating from the 1970s and 1980s. The papers contain photographs, correspondence, speeches, publications, subject files, and organizational records, such as minutes, financials, memorandums, agendas, and reports.

Photographs relating to Jewish life in Czechoslovakia, England, Estonia, France, Germany, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Netherlands, Rumania, Russia and Spain.

Manuscripts of poems, articles and translations by R. Nevodovska. Correspondence, personal documents, clippings of Nevodovska's poems and articles, manuscripts by Mordecai Jaffe.

Correspondence, 1940-1974. Reports. Materials pertaining to Bessarabian Jews in France, 1940s-1950s. Scrapbook. Newspaper clippings. Honorary citations. Photographs. Publications of: the Federation of Bessarabian Societies, Inc.; Bessarabian Federation of American Jews; Bessarabier Podolier B.S.; Federation of Bessarabian Jews in Israel 1940s-1950s. Miscellaneous publications.

Printed materials, correspondence, notes, manuscripts relating to Jewish life in Mexico, Central America, South America, Romania. The materials reflect Liebman's careers in Jewish organizations as well as his work as a historian.

Photographs collected from various sources which relate to all aspects of Jewish life in about 65 countries. Included are photographs of street scenes, synagogues and other community buildings, community leaders and members, market scenes, economic life, schools, factories, activities of Jewish organizations, members of organizations, political parties, religious activities, families, immigration, antisemitism, pogroms, historical events, Holocaust period. Holocaust photographs relate to, Nazi propaganda activities, Nazi personalities, concentration camps, ghetto conditions, atrocities, deportations, extermination, post-war memorial monuments. The following countries are included: Abyssinia, Algeria, Antilles (Netherlands), Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Bessarabia, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Egypt, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Great Britain, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Libya, Lithuania, Luxemburg, Malaysia, Mexico, Mongolia, Morocco, the Netherlands, Norway, Pakistan, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Rhodesia, Rumania, Russia and the Soviet Union, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Tanganyika, Tunisia, Turkey, Uruguay, the United States, Venezuela, Yemen, Yugoslavia. The largest collections by far are those of Poland, 1860s to the present and Russia and the Soviet Union, 1880s-1970s and the U.S., ca. 1900-1980s. Photographs are arranged by locality and not by subject. Within each country the arrangement is by name of city, town or village. For some countries separate groupings were established for the Holocaust period. Card Inventory for each country, English. The bulk of the Polish collection and part of the Lithuanian, Estonian, Latvian and Russian photographs are cataloged on YIVO's videodisc database, titled"People of a Thousand Towns.".

These are fragmentary records of the WOU which consist of the following: General files: minutes of WOU meetings, 1934-1939; reports of ORT activities; reports about ORT-OSE-EMIGDIRECT joint relief campaign. Geographical files: correspondence, minutes of meetings, reports, clippings sent to WOU office from ORT branches in Australia, France, Latvia, Lithuania, Palestine, Poland, Rumania, Soviet Union, United States. Publicity files: clippings, press releases, brochures, posters.