Among the 22 million items in the Archives

of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research are many rare artifacts. These items, which span the 15th to the 20th century and come from many different countries, include manuscripts, letters, official documents, handmade books, ritual objects, textiles, fine artworks, photographs, films, sound recordings, and Holocaust artifacts.

Click any of the thumbnail images at right to view in a larger format with full caption.

                       
  Tax receipt written by a Jewish tax collector,
Gerona, Spain, 1490
  Handwritten copy of a Bava Kamma belonging to the Rothschild family, 1722   Page from a pinkes of the Vilna kehillah,
ca. 1777
 

Page from the original manuscript for Funem yarid (From the fair), by Sholem Aleichem

  A guard's armband from the Vilna ghetto, where the Nazis confined the city's Jews during World War II   Registration form from Auschwitz for a newly arrived Jewish prisoner from Greece, ca. 1942   Drawing of an execution by a child survivor of the
Warsaw Ghetto, 1946
  Letter from Anarchist leader Emma Goldman, 1931