Microfilmed by Archival Microfilm Services for Yivo Institute for Jewish Research

Collection consists of 354 books, pamphlets, and offprints in the Russian language, from the YIVO Library's Vilna and Elias Tcherikower collections of slavic judaica. Most of these publications were printed in Central and Eastern Europe during the 19th and 20th centuries (all of them before 1940 and most before 1917). Topics include Jewish religious traditions, Jewish history, the struggle for equal rights for Jews in Tsarist Russia, social and political movements (e.g., zionism, socialism), Jewish community organizations, Jewish-Christian relations, anti-semitism, and emigration to America.

Scope: 354 titles

Provenance:
Elias Tcherikower collected many of his books in Russia and the Ukraine. The Tcherikower library and archive followed its owner from Kiev to Berlin, and then to Paris, where the collection was hidden during the Second World War. Tcherikower and his wife escaped from occupied France to New York, and after the war, his books and manuscripts were found and bequeathed to YIVO. The books in the Vilna collection have been the property of the YIVO Library since the YIVO institute's location in Vilna (Vilnius, Lithuania). During the Nazi occupation (1941-1943) the Vilna YIVO Library was confiscated and shipped to Germany, to be incorporated into an anti-semitic research centre. However, these library materials were recovered near Frankfurt am Main and returned to YIVO, now located in New York, in 1947.

Yale owns all 28 microfilm reels of the collection. Scholars can consult these sources in the Microtext Reading Room, which is in the basement of Sterling Memorial Library. A published guide to the collection is in the Microtext Reading Room under the call number DS135 R9 +S52 1998(LC).

Sterling Library's hours of operation
LOCATION: SML, Microform (Non-Circulating)
CALL NUMBER: Film B14468