100 Objects: From the Collections of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research
Edited and with introductions by Stefanie Halpern (YIVO)

The 1892 Yiddish translations of the United States Constitution and Declaration of Independence; the stark “Arrivals and Departures” ledger from Auschwitz Block 8; and acclaimed Yiddish author Chaim Grade’s Remington Rand Deluxe Model 5 Hebrew typewriter. These are among the items representing more than a thousand years of Eastern European Jewish life showcased in the book 100 Objects: From the Collections of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research.

Published as part of the celebration of YIVO’s centennial, the coffee table book is at once a celebration of Yiddish culture and a call to remembrance. YIVO, originally the Yidisher Visnshaftlekher Institut, or Yiddish Scientific Institute, was founded on March 24, 1925, in Vilna, Poland (today’s Vilnius, Lithuania). Its mission was to document Jewish culture, often through volunteer zamlers, collectors in Yiddish, who gathered everything from books and newspapers to sheet music and Judaica.

That mission shifted abruptly to preservation when the Nazis occupied Lithuania in 1942. The now-famous Paper Brigade—a team of poets, scholars and archivists in the Vilna Ghetto that included many former YIVO academics—risked their lives to smuggle books, documents and artifacts to the ghetto and hide them. After the war and with the help of the United States Army, many of the hidden items as well as crates of objects looted by the Nazis were sent to YIVO’s headquarters in New York City, where the institution had relocated in 1940. 

Narrowing down the institute’s 24 million holdings to 100 items for the book was a challenge. “It was a big feat to choose the objects,” said Stefanie Halpern, director of YIVO’s archive, in an interview.

“My colleagues and I each have our favorites,” she said. “We put them all on a list with the criteria that each one had to have a great story, an interesting provenance and strong visual appeal. Then came the hard part—whittling them down.”

The result is 10 thematic chapters—among them, “Beliefs and Customs,” the “Written Word,” “Labor” and “Immigration”—that together offer a sweeping portrait of Jewish life in Europe as well as of the descendants of those European immigrants in the United States. The book also features essays by 57 experts and academics, including Yiddish culture scholar Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, professor of Yiddish literature David G. Roskies and American Jewish historian Hasia Diner as well as contributions from YIVO staff.

Some of the selections in the book reveal unexpected corners of history. In the chapter on antisemitism, a 1922 letter from the Lake Mohonk Mountain House in the Catskills lays bare the bias of the era. The Feldbergs, a Jewish couple, had inquired about employment. Management replied the very next day: “…we wish to state that we do not employ people of your race.”

As YIVO CEO Jonathan Brent notes in his essay, this curt dismissal reflected “the most murderous set of ideas of the modern world: the quack genetics of race science.”

That letter as well as several other artifacts featured in the book are on display at the Center for Jewish History in New York City through the end of December in the exhibit “Hail to the Zamlers! YIVO’s Collections at 100.” It is one of three centennial exhibits currently on display at the center.

Other objects highlighted in the book carry more personal significance. In the “Labor” chapter, readers encounter the furrier’s toolkit of Albert Snyder, son of Romanian immigrants, including cutting implements, thread and a metal box with sewing notions. Snyder, a fur designer and manufacturer, founded Contour Furs, Inc. in New York City after his service in World War II. For YIVO archive director Halpern, the metal box is a poignant reminder of her own grandmother’s box of sewing notions.

“That’s what we want people to feel,” she said. “To see themselves reflected in YIVO’s history, in some way.” 

Cathryn J. Prince is an adjunct professor in journalism at Fordham University and the author of the forthcoming book For the Love of Labor: The Life of Pauline Newman.