Military occupation

The bulk of the collection contains documents generated by the Judenrats of the Vilna ghetto during Nazi occupation. The Yiddish poets Abraham Sutzkever and Szmerke Kaczerginski, interned in the Vilna Ghetto before escaping to the forests as partisans, were instrumental in the removal of this collection from Vilna and its subsequent transfer to the YIVO Archives in New York. The collection is therefore named in their honor.

The Edgar Trier Collection documents Edgar Trier’s military career, first as a member of the French Foreign Legion and then as a soldier in the Unites States Army. The collection consists of personal materials as well as Army related materials such as personal correspondence, memoirs, military orders and reports, certificates, photographs, and clippings.

Multilingual German army proclamations issued during World War I, in Vilna, Warsaw, and German General Headquarters for the Eastern Front, containing regulations, announcements, warnings, war dispatches, and election list for Jewish elections in Liebau (today Leipaja, Latvia).

Photos, clippings, manuscripts, program posters, correspondence, ID's, of Joseph and Adrienne Willner. There are ID cards regarding his work in C.I.C. - Headquarters Command USFA in Vienna, as well as pamphlets on magic tricks, lecture scripts on hypnosis, various scripts for theater plays, and notes and clippings on the death of Joe Willner, the magician.

The Marion Rosenthal Biel Collection holds papers of Marion Rosenthal Biel, her husband Frederick (Fritz) Biel, and of some of their family members. Prominent in the collection are documentation of Marion's early life in Germany and of her life during the early 1940s in England, Wales, and New York, as well as Frederick's time as an interpreter in the United States Army during World War II. The collection includes diaries, military documentation, photographs and a photo album, a small amount of correspondence, family members' official documents, and various other papers.