YIVO Receives a $270,000+ Grant for the Largest Archival Digitization Project in its History – the Jewish Labor and Political Archives Digitization Project

(New York, NY) – The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research is delighted to announce that it has been awarded a grant of over $270,000 from The Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (Claims Conference), German Federal Ministry of Finance (BMF), and the Foundation Remembrance, Responsibility and Future (EVZ).

This grant will enable YIVO to process and digitize approximately 196,000 pages of the Holocaust-related items from YIVO's Jewish Labor and Political Archives (JLPA).

Much of the material was collected by members of the Jewish Labor Bund during World War II at great risk to their lives, and documents various aspects of the Holocaust and its aftermath, including Nazi atrocities in the extermination camps and ghettos, armed and intellectual acts of Jewish resistance, and the renewal of Jewish life in the immediate post-war period. Materials in the collections include correspondence, manuscripts, newsletters, ephemera, and photographs.

These materials are part of an eight-year, $8.5 million project to conserve, process, and digitize YIVO’s Jewish Labor and Political Archive which documents Jewish political, labor, and social movements in the United States and Europe from 1870 to 1992. This project will make these materials available online free-of-charge. The largest archival digitization project in YIVO’s history, the JLPA consists of approximately 3.5 million pages.

The items in the JLPA are among the most sought after in YIVO’s collections and have been used in hundreds of scholarly publications, academic conferences, college courses, and museum exhibitions.

The grant will allow for enhanced description of the Holocaust related materials in the JLPA and their digitization, which will increase their accessibility worldwide. This greater accessibility will in turn lead to new avenues for research, documentation, and scholarship; the development of new Holocaust education resources based on previously unavailable primary documents; and greater awareness of the Bund’s role in anti-Nazi activities and its covert operations during the Holocaust.

For any media inquiries please contact:
Shelly Freeman
Chief of Staff

THE CONFERENCE ON JEWISH MATERIAL CLAIMS AGAINST GERMANY

The Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (Claims Conference) represents world Jewry in negotiating for compensation and restitution for victims of Nazi persecution and their heirs. Among its activities, the Claims Conference administers compensation funds, funds social welfare services, and allocates funds to preserve the memory and lessons of the Shoah. For more information, please visit www.claimscon.org.

THE EVZ FOUNDATION

The EVZ Foundation's mission is to keep alive the memory of the injustices of National Socialist persecution, to assume the resulting responsibility in the present, and to actively shape the future. The Foundation's central purpose when established in 2000 was to pay humanitarian compensation to former forced laborers under the National Socialist regime - a milestone in Germany's efforts to come to terms with the past. Nowadays, within the fields of activity Education and Action, the Foundation funds projects and activities that support the survivors of National Socialist persecution, international understanding and the strengthening of human rights. For more information, please visit https://www.stiftung-evz.de/en/.

YIVO

The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research is dedicated to the preservation and study of the history and culture of East European Jewry worldwide. For nearly a century, YIVO has pioneered new forms of Jewish scholarship, research, education, and cultural expression. Our public programs and exhibitions, as well as online and on-site courses, extend our outreach to a global community. The YIVO Archives contains 24 million unique items and YIVO’s Library has over 400,000 volumes—the single largest resource for the study of East European Jewish life in the world. yivo.org / yivo.org/the-whole-story