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What's New 2003/2004
What's New 2002
What's New 2001
What's New 2000
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A Tribute to Bruno Schulz On November 19, 2002 at 6:00 p.m., YIVO, the Center for Jewish History and the Jewish Heritage Project will present a special program in honor of the 60th anniversary of the death of visionary author and painter Bruno Schulz, who was murdered during the Holocaust. The program has been organized in association with Goethe-Institut New York, the Polish Cultural Institute, New York, the Institute for the Humanities at New York University, and PEN American Center.Please click here for a press kit. Born in 1892 in the Polish town of Drohobycz, in which he would spend most of his life, Bruno Schulz earned his living teaching art to young students. His short stories and darkly erotic sketches were first sent out only to his close friends; but his talent was soon recognized and his writing began circulating in Polish literary circles. Two short story collections, The Street of Crocodiles and Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass, were published to international acclaim. As his fame grew, Schulz struggled to write The Messiah, the novel that was to be his masterwork. The tragic disappearance of this, his final work, has seized the literature imagination of a generation of writers and is still the subject of intense speculation. Schulz never completed The Messiah. The Nazis occupied Drohobycz on July 3, 1941. Schulz was first placed under the protection of a Nazi officer who obliged him to paint fairy tale figures on the walls of his son’s bedroom. Caught in an escalating feud between his protector and another Nazi officer, Schulz was shot on November 19, 1942. Despite an intensive search after the end of the war, his murals were not uncovered until February 9, 2001, when documentary filmmaker Benjamin Geissler discovered the long lost pictures. In May 2001, representatives of Yad Vashem in Jerusalem removed the murals from Drohobycz, sparking an international controversy. Schedule of the program: 6 p.m.—VIRTUAL EXHIBIT. The life and visual work of Bruno Schulz with images from the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research Archives and the academy of Literature in Warsaw, Poland. 6:15 p.m.—VIDEO SCREENING. Street of Crocodiles, an animation by the Quay Brothers.
The program is free of charge and takes place at the Center for Jewish History, 15 West 16th Street. Reservations must be made by calling the Center’s Box Office, 917- 606-8200.
Online Catalog of Photographs of Jewish Life In Eastern Europe Now Available to Researchers in YIVO Reading Room
"The photographs constitute a visual record of thousands of pre-World War II Jewish communities in Poland, Lithuania, Russia, Ukraine, Latvia, Estonia, Romania, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia," notes YIVO Photo Archivist Krysia Fisher. "They span the late nineteenth century to the early 1940s and document the lives of large Jewish centers as well as many smaller towns and villages. In some cases, the pictures are the only known photographic traces of communities later wiped out by the Nazis."
People Of A Thousand Towns was created as a videodisc connected to a computer database in 1981-1987 with funds from the Charles H. Revson Foundation. Over the past fourteen years, it has been used extensively by curators, filmmakers and other researchers. The 2002 edition of the catalog, an Internet-based research tool, was made possible with funds from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany and was developed in consultation with the New York firm Data Based Media.
"This videodisc catalog represented a pioneering foray into the brand-new world of multimedia when the Revson Foundation provided the funds for its creation back in the 1980s. Now we are carrying YIVO's and the Revson Foundation's vision forward by bringing it into the 21st century," notes YIVO Executive Director Dr. Carl J. Rheins. "But this is only the first step. By the end of the year, People Of A Thousand Towns will also be available to researchers around the world, over the Internet."
August 12, 1952: 50 Years Since Stalin's Final Assault on Jewish Culture On Tuesday, July 23, at 7:00 p.m., YIVO will hold a special summer program, August 12, 1952: 50 Years Since Stalin's Final Assault on Jewish Culture, a panel discussion commemorating the leading Soviet Jewish cultural figures who were executed on Stalin's orders 50 years ago.
2001 Karski and Nirenska Prize Awarded
Fr. Stanislaw Musial is a leading voice in the Polish-Jewish dialogue of the last two decades. His many writings against anti-Semitism and xenophobia in Polish society in general, and within the Catholic Church in particular, have made him a central figure in the ongoing—and at times deeply divisive—discourse about the past and the present of Polish-Jewish relations.
He first became involved in the Polish-Jewish dialogue during a particularly intense dispute over the Carmelite convent, which was built in 1984 adjoining the site of the Auschwitz concentration camp. As the Secretary of the Commission of the Polish Episcopate For Dialogue with Judaism (Komisja Episkopatu Polski do Spraw Dialogu z Judaizmem) from 1986 until 1995, Fr. Musial was instrumental in negotiating an agreement with Jewish groups resulting in the convent's relocation.
Similarly, during the dispute over the 300 crosses planted near Auschwitz, Fr. Musial was a forceful voice in the drive to prohibit the use of religious symbols at the concentration camp. In his public pronouncements, mainly in the articles and interviews, Musial calls on the Catholic Church to rid itself of the scourge of anti-Semitism, past and present. He raises painful questions about the Church's silence during the Holocaust, and about its lack of resolve to condemn present-day persistence of anti-Jewish sentiments among its clergy.
"I believe," Fr. Musial wrote recently, "that in our homeland one will have to wait much longer until the time when an anti-Semitic deed or pronouncement would make people rise. Despite everything that was done on our soil by the Nazis there is still a lack of the common perception that anti-Semitism is in its nature and in every form deadly…"
Born in 1938 to a peasant family, he is best known to Polish readers through his frequent articles in the popular Polish Catholic weekly Tygodnik Powszechny. His essays on Polish-Jewish history also have been published in other periodicals, including Midrash and Polin.
The 2001 award committee consisted of Prof. Jozef Gierowski, Jagellonian University, Cracow; Prof. Czeslaw Milosz, University of California at Berkeley; Prof. Jerzy Tomaszewski, Warsaw University; Prof. Feliks Tych, Jewish Historical Institute, Warsaw; and Marek Web, Senior Research Scholar, representing the YIVO Institute ex-officio.
The late Professor Jan Karski, who established the prize at YIVO, was the envoy of the Polish government-in-exile during World War II who brought to the West firsthand testimony about the conditions in the Warsaw Ghetto and in German death camps. The prize is also named in memory of Professor Karski's late wife, choreographer Pola Nirenska.
New Gallery Hours
The current exhibition, Matityahu Strashun: Scholar, Philanthropist, Book Collector, has been extended until September 2002.
Upcoming Events at YIVO
Monday April 22 at 7:30 pm
Professor Mamlock
This Soviet feature is the first dramatic film on the subject of Nazi anti-Semitism ever made, and the first to bring American audiences news of the Nazis' murderous intentions toward Jews. A screen adaptation of a play by Friedrich Wolf, who was an associate of Bertolt Brecht, the movie recounts the story of a Jewish surgeon and scientist, who, because of his high position and his status as a war veteran, falsely believes himself to be immune from Nazi persecution.
Speaker: David Engel,
Attend this staged reading by actors and preview a new, powerful Yiddish play about the last days of the Vilna Ghetto. Ghetto Cabaret is based on research conducted in the YIVO Archives and Library by co-writers Miriam Hoffman, a well-known Yiddish journalist and a founder of the Joseph Papp Yiddish Theater, and playwright Rena Borow. The play uses sketches and songs performed in the ghetto theater, diaries, and memoirs to depict both the daily struggle for survival in the Vilna Ghetto and the creative force that fed Jewish spiritual and armed resistance.
Click here for a calendar of more upcoming YIVO events.
Lecture, 4/9:
Modern Hebrew and Yiddish literature shared the same cradle: the cultural ferment of 19th-century Eastern and Central Europe. And like many brothers and sisters their relations have often been characterized by intense sibling rivalry.
Hillel Halkin will examine the similarities and differences between these two literatures and pose a provocative question: Has the time come to begin to consider modern Hebrew and Yiddish literature as a single body of East European Jewish writing or are there good reasons to continue to think of them as separate?
Hillel Halkin, a native of New York City, has lived in Israel for over 30 years. He is the author of Letters to An American Jewish Friend (1976) and the forthcoming Across the Sabbath River: In Search Of A Lost Tribe of Israel. He is internationally known as a translator of Hebrew and Yiddish literature and as an essayist on literary, cultural, and political issues in the pages of Commentary, The New Republic, The Forward, The Jerusalem Report, and other publications.
The program will take place at the Center for Jewish History.
Brad Sabin Hill New Dean of Library
"We are tremendously proud to have Brad Sabin Hill join the YIVO staff," Dr. Carl J. Rheins, Executive Director, noted.
"He actually is returning to us - he has previously done special studies in cataloguing and bibliography through YIVO’s
Max Weinreich Center, and he is a graduate of the Uriel Weinreich Summer Program in Yiddish Language, Literature and
Culture. His specialist knowledge and expertise, as well as excellent leadership skills, will maintain the YIVO Library as a
world class institution."
Mr. Hill read Hebrew, Classics and Yiddish at universities in the United States (Yeshiva University) and Canada (McGill
University), and took his degree in Classics, magna cum laude, at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.
The author of a number of books and articles in the field of Hebrew bibliography, Mr. Hill has curated exhibitions of rare
Hebraica in Ottawa, London and New York, and prepared the exhibition catalogues Incunabula, Hebraica & Judaica
(1981) and Hebraica from the Valmadonna Trust (1989). He also edited a volume of Hebrew bibliographical studies
(1995), and wrote a study of Hebrew deluxe printing on vellum (1996), both published by The British Library. His articles
include studies on the history of Hebrew typography and Hebrew libraries, as well as "Yiddish Manuscripts in the British
Library"(co-authored with L. Prager, 1995), and "Yiddish Bibliography at Oxford" (1999). He has lectured widely on
Hebrew and Yiddish booklore, including such topics as "Hebrew Printing in Poland" and "I. B. Singer’s Ancestral Library."
At Oxford he taught the "Introduction to Hebrew and Yiddish Bibliography" for the University’s Diploma in Jewish Studies.
Brad Sabin Hill is a Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society (London), and has held professional memberships in the Hebraica
Libraries Group of Great Britain (London), the Association of Jewish Libraries (New York), and the Oxford Bibliographical
Society.
As Dean of the Library and Senior Research Librarian, Mr. Hill will shape daily library activities, support research work, help
develop long range plans and bibliographic projects, and act as a member of YIVO’s senior executive team, along with Aviva
Astrinsky who continues as YIVO’s Head of the Library.
New Exhibit Showcases Strashun Rare Book Collection
Samuel Strashun (1793-1872) and his son, Matityahu (Mathias) Strashun (1817-1885) were both distinguished Talmudic scholars and great philanthropists in 19th century Vilna (then in Poland, now Vilnius, Lithuania). The Strashun family was a staunch supporter of secular education as well as yeshiva studies. Along with the Harkavy and Romm families, to whom they were connected by marriage, they formed the backbone of the Jewish community of pre-Holocaust Vilna.
Mathias Strashun spent a great part of his fortune on collecting rare Hebrew books. In his will he bequeathed his magnificent library to the Vilna community, thus creating one of the first Jewish public libraries in Eastern Europe. When the Russians occupied Vilna in 1940, the Strashun Library was merged with the Vilna YIVO Library. A year later, shortly following the Nazi conquest of the city, it was decreed that all Jewish books be crated and shipped to Frankfurt am Main. Fortunately, the liberating forces of the American Army discovered the stolen books in 1945, and returned them to YIVO in New York in 1947.
"Jews always cherished their books and carried them into exile, whenever they were expelled by the whim of their rulers," Aviva Astrinsky, Head of the YIVO Library has said. "It is a great privilege to be working with these age-old books, many of which bear the writings or stamps of former owners—and of various censors, from the Papal Inquisition in Italy through the Tsarist censorship in the Russian Empire."
In YIVO's earlier quarters at 1048 Fifth Avenue, there was very little space to display these precious books.
"We are delighted to now be able to share them in our magnificent new home at the Center for Jewish History," noted Dr. Carl J. Rheins, YIVO Executive Director. "The preservation of the Strashun Rare Book Collection and the digitization of its card catalog were made possible through the generosity of Mrs. Tanya Corbin and Mr. Irwin Jacobs, and the Waber Fund. We are very grateful for their beneficence, which will ensure that this invaluable resource remains available to future generations."
Career Opportunities at YIVO
The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research invites applications and nominations for the position of Director of the Archives.
Collecting materials documenting the life and creativity of East European Jewry has been a major focus of YIVO's mission since the Institute's inception. The approximately 1,400 record groups that make up the YIVO Archives occupy over 10,000 linear feet of shelf space and consist of over 22,000,000 documents. These collections consist predominantly of organizational records, manuscripts, correspondence, and printed materials. The Archives also holds photographs, films, videotapes, sound recordings, art works, and artifacts, most of which have been organized into the following special collections: Music Collections, Sound Archive, Photographic Archive, Film Archive, and Art and Artifacts Collection. The primary languages of the documents are Yiddish, English, Hebrew, Russian, Polish, French, and German. The collections, while covering a wide range of topics relating to Jewish history and culture around the world, concentrate on four main areas: East European Jewish history; history of the Jews in the United States; Yiddish language, literature, and culture; and the Holocaust. In 1992, YIVO acquired the Bund Archives, one of the foremost Jewish collections specializing in the history of the socialist and labor movements.
The Director of the Archives is responsible for the leadership and management of the department and is charged with overseeing accessioning, processing, cataloging, preservation, and access to materials; supervising collection development, automation, and preservation projects, and other initiatives designed to safeguard and provide improved access to collections; initiating grants related to archival needs and supervising their realization; and administering the departmental budget. The Archives Director will lead a staff of 10 in developing a shared vision for reference services and collection development; overseeing the ongoing implementation and assessment of initiatives that support that vision; analyzing and reshaping the Archives' services and policies in response to the needs of YIVO's clientele; and playing a leading role in Center-wide projects and committees. He/she will also be expected to develop strategies for increasing scholarly use of the collections and boosting public awareness of the Archives.
The successful candidate will have demonstrated abilities in leadership and fiscal management, at least 5 years administrative experience in a research archives, proficiency in Yiddish, a reading knowledge of Hebrew and a Slavic language, a background in East European Jewish studies, and experience in processing manuscripts and other archival materials. Familiarity with digital archives trends and developments is preferred. Availability as of September 1, 2001 is desired, if possible. Salary and benefits are highly competitive.
YIVO seeks a talented individual to assist the Director of Development and External Affairs.
Responsibilities: The Development Executive Assistant will provide support to the Director of Development and External Affairs, which includes all the details of a busy office, such as scheduling, phones, correspondence, mail, entering donations into the database, coordinating various committee meetings, working with Board members, and assisting with a variety of special projects and events. The ideal candidate will show administrative executive judgment and resolve, realism and accountability about fiscal matters, and the energy and ambition to excel.
Requirements: Five years minimum of experience in a busy development office. B.A. preferred, but not necessary. Candidates will need excellent verbal and written communication, interpersonal, organization, and typing skills, and proficiency in Raisers Edge and MS Office.
YIVO is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer
YIVO seeks a qualified candidate to serve as receptionist and administrative assistant.
Duties include: Answer and transfer calls; various administrative functions which include clerical support to all departments; data entry
Qualifications: Excellent verbal, written, and interpersonal skills; proficiency in using MS Office; effective communication and time management skills
Excellent Benefits Package
YIVO is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer
The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, the world’s leading center for the study of the history
and culture of East European Jewry, seeks applications for a part-time Grants Writer for its expanding Department of Development and External Affairs.
The Grants Writer will be responsible for expanding the Institute’s current level of sponsored research. The new incumbent should have a successful track record of obtaining grants from federal, state, municipal, and corporate funding sources. This position requires knowledge of funding sources and governmental regulations, and superb written and oral communications skills. Working knowledge of Microsoft Office is essential. A minimum of three (3) years related experience and a Master’s degree are required.
YIVO is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer
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