About YIVO

History of YIVO | What Does That Logo Mean?

YIVO is all these things: a research institute, an institution of higher learning, an adult education organization, a cultural organization, and a world-renowned library and archive.

• Mission: To preserve, study, share, and perpetuate knowledge of the history and culture of East European Jewry worldwide.
• Founded in Berlin and Wilno, Poland (now Vilnius, Lithuania) in 1925 as the Yiddish Scientific Institute with the support of leading intellectuals and scholars, including Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud.
• Located in Wilno (or as it is commonly known, Vilna) from 1925 until forced by World War II to relocate to New York City, where it has been headquartered since 1940.
• YIVO’s Archives and Library represent the single largest and most comprehensive collection of materials on East European Jewish civilization in the world, and receives upwards of 5,000 on-site visits, email, and phone requests annually.
• The YIVO Archives contains some 24 million items, including sound and music collections, theater and art collections, communal and personal records, photographs and films, manuscripts, diaries, memoirs, personal correspondence, and much more.
• YIVO’s Library has nearly 400,000 volumes in all European languages, and contains the largest collection of Yiddish-language books, pamphlets, and newspapers in the world.
• YIVO is the only prewar Jewish archives and library to have survived the Holocaust. Its materials were looted by the Nazis, but some were rescued after the war and returned to YIVO. Other books and documents turned up decades later in Lithuania. In 2015, YIVO launched the Edward Blank YIVO Vilna Online Collections project, a 7-year project to digitally reunite these millions of pages of documents and books.
• YIVO’s Uriel Weinreich Program in Yiddish Language, Literature, and Culture, the oldest intensive Yiddish language learning program, has been held every summer since 1968.
• YIVO’s rules for transliteration of Yiddish into English are the most commonly accepted standard used by publishers and academics.
• The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe is the world’s most comprehensive free online encyclopedia, with over 180,000 visitors a year.
• YIVO’s Shine Online Educational Series, launched in January 2016, offers students access to YIVO’s unique collection of resources from anywhere in the world.
• The YIVO Bruce and Francesca Cernia Slovin Online Museum, launched in 2020, is a unique, wide-ranging educational initiative that presents East European Jewish history through the lives of specific individuals. By making use of rare or unknown treasures of YIVO’s Archives and Library, presented through interactive experiences, the Museum seeks to restore concrete living context to this little known or understood past of the Jewish people.
• YIVO offers 40-50 programs a year: lectures, conferences, and concerts, featuring award-winning scholars, writers, performers, and artists.
• YIVO offers adult education and Yiddish language programs, and research opportunities.