A YIVO Timeline/Time Capsule

If YIVO were to assemble a 20th-century time capsule, it might include some of the artifacts attached to this timeline of its history.

Click any of the artifacts at right to view in a larger format with caption.

YIVO is founded at conferences of Jewish scholars and educators in Berlin and Vilna. An American branch of YIVO is also established.

YIVO dedicates its new building at 18 Wiwulskiego Street in Vilna.

YIVO begins publication of YIVO-bleter, a Yiddish-language scholarly journal.

YIVO's tenth anniversary is commemorated with a conference attended by scholars from all over the world. The institute establishes the Dr. Tsemakh Shabad aspirantur, a training program for young Jewish studies scholars.

YIVO helps standardize spelling in Yiddish by establishing rules for Yiddish orthography.

Shortly after the outbreak of World War II, YIVO's international headquarters are relocated to New York City, to the HIAS building on Lafayette Street. YIVO later moves to a building on West 123rd Street.

The Nazis take over YIVO's Vilna headquarters and plunder thousands of books and documents for use in a proposed "Institute for the Study of the Jewish Question," in Frankfurt am Main. YIVO scholars are ordered to select materials for shipment to Germany, but in heroic acts of resistance, hide many rare items.

The first volume of YIVO Annual of Jewish Social Science, an English-language scholarly journal, is published in New York. That same year, YIVO director Max Weinreich publishes Hitler's Professors, a stinging condemnation of the compliance of German academicians with Nazism.

With the help of the U.S. Army, YIVO begins the recovery of materials appropriated by the Nazis during World War II. YIVO's exhibition, Jews in Europe: 1939-1946, provides some Americans with their first look at documentary evidence of the Holocaust.

YIVO publishes Uriel Weinreich's College Yiddish, the first English-language textbook for the study of Yiddish at the university level. A year later, it publishes Der oytser fun der yidisher shprakh (Thesaurus of the Yiddish Language) by Nahum Stutchkoff.

YIVO moves to its third U.S. home, the former Vanderbilt mansion at 1048 Fifth Avenue.

YIVO provides archival material for use in the trial of Nazi Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem. YIVO and Yad Vashem begin publication of the Guide to Jewish History Under Nazi Impact, the first of twelve bibliographical guides to literature on the Holocaust.

YIVO establishes the Max Weinreich Center for Advanced Jewish Studies for graduate-level study of Yiddish language and literature and Jewish social science. The Uriel Weinreich Program in Yiddish Language, Literature and Culture, an intensive summer program, is inaugurated at Columbia University.

YIVO publishes Max Weinreich's monumental Di geshikhte fun der yidisher shprakh (The History of the Yiddish Language)in Yiddish. In 1982, the University of Chicago publishes the first two volumes in English translation.

Image Before My Eyes, a major exhibition devoted to photographs of Polish Jewish life, is organized by YIVO and the Jewish Museum. YIVO will go on to publish a book and produce a documentary film based on the exhibition.

YIVO responds to a new public interest in traditional Jewish music, or klezmer, by inaugurating the first Yiddish Folk Arts Program, bringing together young musicians with seasoned performers of the genre. The program, popularly known as KlezKamp, also teaches other Yiddish folk arts, such as dance, calligraphy, paper-cutting, and cooking.

Long-lost YIVO archives and library materials are rediscovered in the Lithuanian National Book Chamber (formerly a Catholic church) in Vilnius, Lithuania, where they have been secretly safeguarded by librarians throughout the Soviet period.

YIVO acquires a major new collection, the Bund Archives and Library of the Jewish Labor Movement.

The first shipment of YIVO archival materials discovered in Vilnius are received by YIVO in New York for cataloging, microfilming, and preservation.

YIVO moves into its fifth American home, the Center for Jewish History, at 15 West 16th Street.