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Despite the coronavirus are nearing completion (scheduled for December 2021) pandemic, YIVO and the of this monumental contribution to Jewish knowledge Edward Blank YIVO Vilna and Jewish communal life that will affect individuals Online Collections project and institutions throughout the world. We are proud of have continued to thrive. Staff our accomplishments yet humble before the work of the has been redeployed to work generations that preceded us without whose foresight remotely and prepare for the time and often heroic efforts our work would not have been when our physical premises will possible; and we are grateful to all who have helped reopen. I’m delighted to report support this work and are continuing to help us raise the that over this period substantial $1 million necessary for the final stage of the Project. progress has been made in processing and preparing the books and documents of EBYVOC. YIVO’s Lithuanian partners have completed all archival and library work, with the exception of the new discoveries Jonathan Brent made at the Lithuanian National Library in 2017. We Executive Director & CEO
LOCATED IN THE CENTER FOR JEWISH HISTORY 15 West 16th Street New York, NY 10011-6301 yivo.org 212.246.6080
Summer 2020 NEWSLETTER
DIGITIZATION PROGRESS THROUGH ABOUT THE PROJECT JUNE 8, 2020 “THESE MATERIALS ARE HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS” During World War II, the Nazis looted The Edward Blank YIVO Vilna Online OVER 3 MILLION PAGES DIGITIZED YIVO’s archive and library, along with other Collections project, launched in 2015, is a $7 Jewish libraries in Vilnius, Lithuania. The million, international landmark digital initia- % Jews who were forced to sort the materials tive to process, conserve, and digitally reunite 100 for the Nazis risked their lives to smuggle YIVO’s divided prewar library and archival books digitized these rare treasures to hiding places in the collections through a dedicated web portal. 50% available online Vilna Ghetto. Much was destroyed, but some These materials include newly-discovered [Project goal: 12,500 books] of the materials were returned to YIVO (who Holocaust documentation and the remnants had by then relocated to the United States), of the famed Strashun Library. % with the help of the U.S. Army. Other items This project is a partnership between the Over 50 remained in Vilnius to be recovered and YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, the Lith- archival documents rescued from the Soviets by a Lithuanian uanian Central State Archives, the Martynas digitized librarian, who hid them for over 40 years Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania, and [Project goal: Est. 2 million pages] until they were rediscovered in 1988. In 2017, the Wroblewski Library of the Lithuanian approximately 200,000 additional documents Academy of Sciences. were discovered in Lithuania, including rare It has inspired funders, scholars, and Nearly 50% and unpublished works. laypeople around the world. images of books and documents available online [Project goal: YIVO has raised $6 million out of $7 million Est. 4.1 million images]
VILNACOLLECTIONS.YIVO.ORG NEWS & UPDATES FEATURED ARTIFACT
WROBLEWSKI Nearly 21,000 pages of archival docu- LIBRARY ments from the Wroblewski Library MATERIALS of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences NOW are now available online as Record AVAILABLE Group 8001. These materials, which ONLINE have been housed at the Wroblewski Library since 1948, were officially added to the Edward Blank YIVO Vilna Online Collections project in 2017. Conserved, processed, and digitized by our partners at the Wroblewski Library, many of these documents correspond to materials housed in the YIVO Archives and fill in missing gaps in YIVO’s collections. The digital files can be accessed here:
https://archives.cjh.org/repositories/7/resources/20004
LITHUANIA After a forced closure due to the pan- AN-SKI’S THE DYBBUK MANUSCRIPT RESUMES demic, we are pleased to announce that This year marks the 100th yortsayt of writer and ethnog- DIGITIZATION conservation, processing, and digitiza- The WORK tion work has resumed at the Martynas rapher S. An-ski. Among his most famous works is Mažvydas National Library of Lithua- Dybbuk, a play which blurs the boundary between the nia. The team at the National Library is continuing work on the natural and supernatural as two families are ensnared 170,000 pages of newly discovered materials that were added to in spiritual possession. This play was based on material the Project in 2017. Work on this cache of materials, which has An-ski collected on an ethnographic expedition he orga- not been seen by researchers or the public since prior to World nized through Jewish towns of western Russian just before War II, represents the final stage of the Project in Lithuania. World War I. It is estimated that digitization of these 170,000 pages will First written by An-ski in Russian and then translated by be completed in early 2021, and all materials will be available him into Yiddish, the original Yiddish manuscript was lost. online by the end of that year. The Hebrew poet Hayyim Nachman Bialik translated the original version of The Dybbuk into Hebrew and published YIVO’S At the end of March, YIVO announced this translation in 1918. According to information provided VOLUNTEERS a call for volunteers to help summarize by YIVO’s archivists in the 1950s, after a fire destroyed the FROM AROUND 100 youth autobiographies from the original Yiddish manuscript, An-ski used Bialik’s Hebrew THE WORLD project. In the 1930s, the YIVO Division version to recreate a Yiddish text of the play. This manu- of Youth Research began a youth auto- script was kept in the An-ski Historical and Ethnographic biography contest. Sixteen- to twenty-two-year-olds submitted Society in Vilna until World War II. A few fragmentary their work in hopes of winning a cash prize. The autobiographies pages of the reconstructed Yiddish manuscript were saved provide invaluable insights on everyday life in the interwar by Avram Sutzkever and the Paper Brigade, were buried in period – primarily in Yiddish, though there are also entries in the Vilna Ghetto, and were then recovered after the war. Polish, German, Hebrew, English, Russian, Serbo-Croatian, French, and Czech. About 400 of the over 600 original diaries An-ski’s manuscript pages, which are found in the Sutzkev- were recovered after the Holocaust. Forty-three volunteers er-Kaczerginski Collection, Part II: Collection of Literary from around the world are working on writing and editing and Historical Manuscripts (RG 223.2), have been digitized summaries, which will be added to the online catalog, making as part of the Project and will be available online by the the collection significantly easier to navigate. end of 2020.
* OUR DONORS We greatly appreciate and acknowledge the following donors for their generous support of this Project:
BUILDERS $1,000,000+ The Slovin Foundation Jonathan I. Mishkin Jack Jacobs and Susan J. Milamed The Board of the YIVO Institute for Caryl B. Ratner Yuyin Jiang Anonymous (2) Jewish Research Linda Jimenez Alys Kremer and Arthur Grossman SUPPORTERS $10,000+ Joan Larsen BENEFACTORS $100,000+ PATRONS $50,000+ Atran Foundation Heidi Levin Anonymous Anonymous Eli and Edythe Broad David Luski Lillian and Joel Cohen The Alice Lawrence Foundation, Inc. Estate of Jean Dubinsky Appleton Donna and Elliott Palevsky The Conference on Jewish Material Yad Vashem United States Department of State Joel Ratner Claims Against Germany Laurie K. Robinson The Good Will Foundation Ethel G. Romm SPONSORS $25,000+ FRIENDS $1,000+ Legacy Heritage Fund Simon Schama Ruth and David Levine Anonymous Gary Blumsohn Loyce Sulkes in honor of the memory of her National Endowment for the Anonymous, in memory of Stanley Faith Coleman beloved husband, Abraham Alvin Sulkes Humanities and David Brown Miriam Engel Karen Underhill and Richard Meller Sandra Pine and Mildred Suesser Anonymous, in memory of Dunn Ed Geffner and Suzanne Spinrad Deborah Waroff The Kronhill Pletka Foundation Odoner and Moishe Odoner Daniel Greenspun The Dr. Julius & Rose Wolk Memorial Fund Righteous Persons Foundation Hittman Family Foundation Feygele Jacobs * as of june 8, 2020
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