Irene Kronhill Pletka, YIVO Honoree, Announces $1 Million Gift at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research Gala

New York, NY – More than 150 people attended the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research gala honoring Irene Kronhill Pletka, Vice Chairman of the YIVO Board, for her exemplary leadership, inspiring generosity, and outstanding commitment to the preservation of Jewish history and culture.

Irene looks for projects where an injection of funds at a critical time will change the conversation. For this reason, Irene pledged a $1 million gift to kick start support for the Bund Digitization Project. The project will digitize approximately 219 linear feet of material and 15,000 photographs that were produced by or relate directly to the Jewish Labor Bund.

The Bund was a Jewish political party that fought for workers’ rights, encouraged the development of a secular and cultural Jewish identity, and fought against antisemitism.

“Irene has helped steer YIVO towards creating a global footprint…She is responsible for creating and leading our very successful study tours to Vilna, Warsaw, and across Poland,” says Ruth Levine, Chair of the YIVO Board. “It has been a most rewarding adventure to work closely with Irene. I marvel at her energy, I delight in her comradeship, and I am touched by her extreme generosity.”

Irene’s unique and strategic approach to philanthropy, which she terms “activist philanthropist” leads her to look for things that other people don’t do. As she says, “There are many worthy causes, some are fashionable, some tug at the heartstrings and have people reaching for their checkbooks. That’s not where I aim to give. I try to look for things that are overlooked or forgotten.”

The Bund Archives, founded in 1899 in Geneva, contains not only the official records of the Bund, but also important correspondence with notable personalities such as Emma Goldman, Albert Einstein, Eleanore Roosevelt, and David Dubinsky; Bundist periodicals written in the Warsaw ghetto (1940-1942); and much more. It contains extensive collections on Communism, Socialism, Zionism and the American labor movement.

“To say that Irene ‘sees the bigger picture’ hardly does her justice: Irene creates the bigger picture,” says YIVO Executive Director Jonathan Brent. “She has done so for many, many people and institutions around the world.”

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Irene Kronhill Pletka

Irene Kronhill Pletka is Vice Chairman of the YIVO Board and Founder and Chairman of the Kronhill Pletka Foundation. The Foundation supports secular Jewish culture, Yiddish language, and re-emerging Jewish communities in Europe and elsewhere.

Born in Shanghai to Polish-Jewish parents who were Sugihara refugees, Irene was raised in Australia. Fluent in multiple languages, she earned a degree in psychology and an MFA in photography from RISD, served as a visiting artist at the Bezalel Academy in Jerusalem for 20 years, and worked as a photographer, designer and, more recently, as a producer for the forthcoming film, “Who Will Write Our History?”

Irene came to YIVO almost inevitably. Her childhood Yiddish teacher in Australia was the son of one of YIVO’s founders. Her father, a lifelong member of the Bund, was a founder of the Yiddish day-school Sholem Aleichem College, as well as an activist in the Jewish community in Melbourne, Australia.

Since founding the Kronhill Pletka Foundation in 2007 and joining YIVO’s board in 2011, Irene has been an activist member of the YIVO, and of other organizations as well. She and the Foundation have supported a variety of projects in Ukraine, Poland, Russia, Serbia, Romania, Venezuela, Italy, Africa, Australia, Israel and the United States. Projects as diverse as funding the re-creation of a 17th century painted wooden synagogue in Poland, a Balkan Sephardi music festival, and enabling Israeli doctors to treat Syrian refugees are some examples of what the Kronhill Pletka Foundation supports.

YIVO, as a cultural organization and as the repository of a priceless legacy of our history in Eastern Europe, provides us with the tools with which to shape our future. This is why Irene supports YIVO.

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