You are kindly invited to a lecture “YIVO During World War II” by Professor David E. Fishman on June 17th at 5 pm. This lecture is part of the event series “Survived Memory,” dedicated to the centenary of YIVO. The series is organized by the Vilnius Old Town Renewal Agency in collaboration with the Judaica Research Center of the Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania.
The lecture will be held in English. Stiklių g. 4 (Main hall)
By 1939, YIVO had established itself as a central scholarly institution not only among Polish Jews but also among Yiddish speakers worldwide. During the Second World War, the fate of the institute was as tragic and heroic as that of the communities it represented. This can be seen by tracing the history of YIVO’s leaders, staff, collections, buildings, and publications from 1939 to 1945. Significantly, two out of the three directors of the institute in Vilnius perished during the war: Zalmen Reizin was murdered by the Soviets, and Zelig Kalmanowicz by the Nazis. Only Max Weinreich managed to emigrate to the United States of America in 1940, where he reestablished YIVO. Thus, YIVO’s history is one of destruction and survival, looting and rescue, annihilation and restoration. YIVO became the only institution in the world to become a war refugee and survive the Holocaust.
David E. Fishman is a professor of history at the Jewish Theological Seminary in the United States. He specializes in the history of Eastern European Jewry and is the author of books such as The Rise of Modern Yiddish Culture and The Book Smugglers: Partisans, Poets, and the Race to Save Jewish Treasures from the Nazis. The latter received the prestigious National Jewish Book Award.
The Book Smugglers is a historical study about the rescue of Jewish books and handwritten documents from the Nazis in Vilnius. Some of these materials have been preserved and are now stored in the Judaica Collection of the Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania, at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York, and in other institutions.