Yiddish literature

The materials in this collection constitute a semi-random sample of the pre-war archive that was transferred to the Central State Archives of the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic following the liquidation of the Vilnius Jewish Museum in 1949. The collection includes records of YIVO work and activities, financial records, correspondence, and publications; documents about pogroms in Ukraine, and Red Army and Soviet activity in Vilna and Bialystok; and a significant amount of records of socialist, communist, and Zionist political parties, as well as associated newspapers and one-time publications.

The Bina Weinreich collection consists of correspondance, memos, articles, documents pertaining YIVO publications (Max Weinreich's "History of the Yiddish Language;" the "Language and Culture Atlas of Ashkenazic Jewry;" Nahum Stutchkoff's "Thesaurus of the Yiddish Language" and Alexander Harkavy's "Yiddish-English-Hebrew Dictionary"), Uriel Weinreich's publications "College Yiddish" and "English-Yiddish Yiddish-English Dictionary," as well as her own publications "Yiddish Folktales" and "Yidishe Folkmayses," personal papers, photographs, folklore and ethnographic materials collected by Bina Weinreich, lectures, papers given, offprints of articles, teaching material, and sound recordings from the "Dialect Project."

Correspondence, including letters from Leo Baeck, Salo Baron, Julie Braun-Vogelstein, Martin Buber, Werner Cahnmann, Max Dienemann, Ismar Elbogen, Erich Fromm, Hermann Fürnberg, Nahum Glatzer, Nahum Goldmann, Max Gruenewald, Max Grunwald, Siegfried Guggenheim, Ernest Jones, Hermann Kesten, Guido Kisch, Adolf Kober, Franz Kobler, Joachim Prinz, Lessing Rosenwald, Ingrid Warburg, Alma Mahler-Werfel, and Franz Werfel.

This collection contains posters, programs, and newspaper reviews for performances of Jewish theater in cities in Germany, Austria, and Lithuania, including theater produced by and about displaced persons in post-World War II Germany.

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.

This collection contains the personal and professional papers of Abraham Liessin, including correspondence with many important literary figures, manuscripts of essays and poems by Liessin from Di Tsukunft(The Future) and from his published works, clippings, receipts, invitations, and other materials relating to Liessin’s family. This collection shows how Di Tsukunft became one of the leading Yiddish literary journsl during hte 25 years of Liessin's editorship.

This collection contains correspondence between Mendel Osherowitch and many important literary and political figures, as well as Yiddish manuscripts by Osherowitch, clippings, photos, and obituaries and letters written to his family after his death. These materials illustrate Osherowitch’s importance in the Yiddish literary field as well as his role in various Jewish organizations.

This collection is made up of Moshe Starkman’s correspondence with many well-known literary and political figures, as well as with various New York and international organizations. There are also biographical sketches written by several of the authors that Starkman included in the Anthology of American-Jewish Poetry and the Lexicon of Modern Yiddish Literature, of which he was an editor.

This collection contains papers of Nokhem Shtif, a Yiddish philologist, editor, literary historian, translator, and political activist, and one of the founders of the YIVO Institute in Vilna. The bulk of the materials pertains to Yiddish language, philology, and literature, as well as to the administration and activities of the Kiev-based Institute of Jewish Proletarian Culture, especially the Philological Section, which was directed by Shtif. The materials include manuscripts of Shtif's writings and speeches; correspondence; reports; meeting minutes; departmental planning documents and course programs/syllabi; materials related to Shtif's teaching of Yiddish stylistics courses; newspaper clippings; several manuscripts of articles and research works by other scholars; and notes, transcriptions, and other research materials, including memoirs related to the lexicographer Y. M. Lifshits.

This collection contains records of the Zukunft monthly journal, which was devoted to publishing political, scientific and literary articles in Yiddish. It contains newspaper clippings, correspondence, meeting minutes, materials relating to conferences and anniversary issues, financial reports, programs, mailings, subscription materials, and typed and handwritten manuscripts submitted for publication.

The Shloyme Rosenberg Collection contains manuscripts and newspaper columns written by Rosenberg. Also included are some personal materials such as correspondence, certificates, and international documentation. Newspaper columns comprise the majority of the collection and are written under a variety of pseudonyms, including S.R. Berg, A. Prashker, I. Prashker, S. Prashker, Reb Shloyme, and Shrage. The manuscript and newspaper and journal publications series are divided into works written under Shloyme Rosenberg's own name and works written under any of his pseudonyms. A majority of the material is written in Yiddish, with some manuscripts translated into English and some articles in Hebrew. Yiddish titles have been transliterated and are arranged according to transliterated title.

This collection contains records of the Guggenheim family, including family tree, family history, vital records, obituaries, papers of family members who emigrated to Chile, and other papers of family members.