YIVO Archives & Library Collections
Overview of Archival Collections | Archives: Special Collections | Overview of Library | Library: Special Collections
YIVO is the great repository of East European Ashkenazic culture, of which American Jewry is the heir. The YIVO Archives and Library represent the single largest and most comprehensive collection of materials on East European Jewish civilization in the world.
extolling the virtues of exercise and the
outdoors. OZE, Society for the Preservation
of Jewish Health, Berlin, 1926. (RG 28
Poland Collection)
The YIVO Archives contain some 24 million items, including sound and music collections, theater and art collections, communal and personal records, photographs and films, manuscripts, diaries, memoirs, personal correspondence, and much more. Its holdings span Jewish civilization from the 15th to 21st centuries, with an emphasis on the Jews of Eastern Europe and their descendants. There is a special focus on Yiddish language and culture, Jewish life in Europe, the Holocaust and its aftermath, and Jewish life in the United States.
The YIVO Library has nearly 400,000 volumes in all European languages, and is the world’s only academic library specializing in the history, languages, literature, culture, folklore, and religious traditions of East European Jewry. It has books in many languages, but also constitutes the largest collection of Yiddish-language books, pamphlets, and newspapers in the world.
Collecting materials documenting the life and creativity of East European Jewry has been a major focus of YIVO's mission since its inception in 1925. During the fifteen years of YIVO's existence in Vilna, it gathered an extensive array of records, manuscripts, books, and artifacts, thanks to the efforts of an international network of professional scholars and amateur zamlers (collectors).
World War II and the Holocaust forced YIVO’s relocation to New York in 1940. Its collections in Vilna were looted by the Nazis. With the help of the U.S. Army, YIVO was able to recover some of these materials and begin its work anew in America.
Today, YIVO’s collections are the primary source of the documentary history of East European Jewry and the surviving record of millions of lives of Jewish victims of the Holocaust. The Archives and Library receive over 5,000 on-site visits, email, and phone requests annually.