The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research to Present YIVO’s Founders Award to Senator Dick Durbin

(New York, NY) – The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research will be presenting U.S. Senator Dick Durbin with YIVO’s Founders Award on Sunday, March 11, 2018 at 6:30pm at The Standard Club (320 South Plymouth Court, Chicago, IL 60604), at a reception hosted with the Consulate General of the Republic of Lithuania in Chicago.

Senator Dick Durbin is receiving YIVO’s Founders Award for his role in preserving the nearly-destroyed legacy of the rich and vibrant Jewish culture in Vilnius, Lithuania. Senator Durbin was instrumental in his support and assistance in helping with the Lithuanian Government as YIVO developed the YIVO Vilna Collections Project in its initial phase. This project, begun in 2015 and named for YIVO board member Edward Blank, is a seven-year, $5.6 million project to preserve and digitize approximately 1.1 million pages of materials and some 12,000 books that were rescued from the Holocaust.

YIVO Executive Director Jonathan Brent will provide special remarks on the “rare works and the reclamation of the cultural history of European Jews,” in which he will discuss the recent discovery of more than 170,000 pages of documents in Vilnius. This trove of materials was first hidden from the Nazis by the YIVO Paper Brigade during World War II and subsequently preserved for decades by the heroic efforts of Antanas Ulpis, a Lithuanian librarian who saved the documents from the pulping mills and stored them in secret in the basement of St. George Church, where he worked. Ulpis risked his own life and his family’s well-being to keep these documents hidden and preserve the memory of the Jewish people. These materials, originally part of YIVO’s pre-War archive and library, will remain in Lithuania as part of the Lithuanian National Library’s Judaica Center, and will be digitized and digitally reunited with the materials that today are in New York through the Project.

About Senator Dick Durbin

U.S. Senator Dick Durbin has served as the senior United States Senator from Illinois since 1997. He is the Democratic Whip, the second-highest position in the Democratic Party leadership in the Senate. He graduated from Georgetown University School of Foreign Service and Georgetown University Law Center.

About 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