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Song of the Murdered Jewish People: Looking for the "Real" Yitzkhak Katzenelson

8/22/2014

Untitled poem by Yitsḥak Katzenelson, n.d. Dedicated to Khayke Kahan, "my friend from Korelitz." "Of everything . . . / Of everything that I once had / There remains to me a heart tired and weary. . . ." Yiddish. RG 108, Manuscripts Collection, F73.12. (YIVO) Poet and playwright Yitzkhak Katzenelson (1885-1944) was known chiefly for ...

Evolving Yiddish audiences’ interest in theatre in Europe in the 19th - first half of the 20th centuries: Yiddish plays in the YIVO Library digital collections

8/15/2014

YIVO Head Librarian and Acting Chief Archivist Lyudmila Sholokhova delivered a presentation at the 10th Congress of the European Association for Jewish Studies in Paris.

This Belongs Here: Interview with Hy Wolfe in the CYCO Bookstore

8/15/2014

Roberta Newman interviewed Hy Wolfe, director of the CYCO Bookstore.

Concentration Camp Bergen-Belsen: Its Origin, Development and Liberation (1965)

8/15/2014

This broadcast from February 28, 1965 presents excerpts from a paperdelivered at YIVO’s annual conference, which had taken place the month before. As Yedies reported at the time, Joseph Gar, a student of “the history of the recent catastrophe” (note that this was before the term “Holocaust” came into general ...

Siem 2014: Uriel Weinreich Summer Program in Yiddish Language and Culture

8/8/2014

On Friday, August 1, 32 students graduated from the 47th Uriel Weinreich Summer Program in Yiddish Language and Culture. The siem (graduation ceremony) opened with remarks by Dr. Sheva Zucker, the program’s Academic Director, and Chava Lapin, YIVO board member and instructor in the program. Guest speaker Kalman Weiser (York ...

Night of the Murdered Poets

8/8/2014
Vokhnteg (Weekdays), by Perets Markish (Moscow, Kharkov, Minsk: Tsentrfarlag, 1931). Illustration by L. Radniev. (YIVO)

On August 12, 1952, thirteen prominent Soviet Jews were executed in Moscow, among them the poets Itsik Fefer, Dovid Hofshteyn, Leyb Kvitko, and Peretz Markish; and the novelist Dovid Bergelson.

Every year, Jewish communities around the world hold commemorations on what has become known as the "Night of the Murdered Poets." This year, on Tuesday, August 12, at 6:30 pm, the Congress for Jewish Culture, the Jewish Labor Committee, and the Workmen's Circle will present a free memorial concert at YIVO.

Dutch soprano Sofie Van Lier and pianist Dimitri Dover will perform in a program that will include the following works:

From the Pages of Yedies

8/8/2014

by ROBERTA NEWMAN The June 1967 issue of Yedies reported on the untimely death of Uriel Weinreich, noted linguist and lexicographer, in whose name YIVO established its intensive summer Yiddish immersion program. Forty-seven years later, his legacy continues in other ways, too: in the Yiddish-English English-Yiddish dictionary that saw publication a ...

From the Pages of Yedies Follow-up

8/8/2014

by ROBERTA NEWMAN On May 23, 2014, we posted an article from the December 1965 issue of Yedies about a visit to YIVO by nuns from Milwaukee who were writing a play based on the book I Never Saw Another Butterfly, an anthology of poems and drawings by children in the ...

Bel Kaufman, author and granddaughter of Sholem Aleichem, dies at age 103

8/1/2014

Sholem Aleichem, his wife Olga, and their three children, Tissa, Lyala (Bel Kaufman’s mother), and Emma, Kiev, 1889. The family portrait was used as a Rosh Hashana greeting card (see Hebrew inscription at bottom). (YIVO Archives) Bel Kaufman, the granddaughter of Yiddish writer Sholem Aleichem and the author of the 1965 bestselling novel Up the Down ...

YIVO in Vilna: Institution, Personalities, and Legacy: Call for Papers

8/1/2014

An international conference dedicated to the 90th anniversary of YIVO's establishment and the 75th anniversary of its transition to New York will take place in Vilnius, Lithuania on April 21-23, 2015.