(Jewish Group) YIVO reunites archives to form 'largest single remnant of Jewish life' in Europe

In 2014, Jonathan Brent discovered something he didn’t know he was missing.

Walking into the Wroblewski Library in Vilnius, he saw a long table covered with boxes. Inside were documents belonging to the organization he heads, YIVO, the Institute for Jewish research, which was founded in Vilna and moved its operations to New York in 1940, a year before the Nazi invasion of Lithuania, which saw the destruction of the old YIVO building and much of its holdings.

The Wroblewski Library had held onto the documents since 1948. Brent asked what the archivist was planning to do with them. They were waiting, she said, for YIVO.


Now, after over 80 years, as part of a seven year, $7 million international project in collaboration with the Wroblenski Library, Lithuanian Central State Archives and National Library of Lithuania, YIVO has reunited and preserved its prewar archives on an accessible online portal. The effort bridges a gap between the institute’s operations in the U.S. and its origins in Eastern Europe, recovering much of what was left behind just before the decimation of European Jewry and making it available digitally in one place.

The approximately 1.5 million pages in the Vilna collection include working drafts by Hasidic philosopher Martin Buber, letters from Albert Einstein to Yiddish writers and actors, a diary of young Theodor Herzl, business papers of the Rothschilds, songs, medical records and case files on families looking to convert to Russian Orthodoxy.

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How exciting!