Vilnius

The books and documents hidden from the Nazis during World War II and then again hidden from the Soviet authorities for decades were digitized and digitally reunited with the Vilna Collections in New York.

The discovery of these books and documents in the Lithuanian Book Depository in 1988 led to 23 years of negotiations between YIVO and the Lithuanian authorities. In the 1990s, archival documents were briefly released to YIVO in New York, where they were conserved, organized, photo-copied, and then, as per agreement, returned to Lithuania.

The Project is a partnership between YIVO and the present-day custodians of the materials, the Lithuanian Central State Archives, the Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania, and the Wroblewski Library of Lithuanian Academy of Sciences.

In May 2017, a momentous discovery was made: some 170,000 pages of additional, previously unknown documents at the Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania. These newly discovered materials will be added to the project.

The Strashun Library books and Yiddish books and periodicals from YIVO’s prewar library are being cataloged and digitized at the Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania. The rare books, some of them unique and dating from the 16th century are being repaired and stabilized in the National Library’s state-of-the-art preservation lab.

The documents sent to YIVO in New York in 1990s are now being digitized at the Lithuanian Central State Archive.

Since the 1990s, a considerable number of additional documents were discovered at the Archive. These are now being organized by YIVO’s archivist in Lithuania and will be digitized in the 2017-2019. The crumpled papers, stained with the dirt of their hiding places, are being flattened and cleaned in in the Central Archive’s state-of-the-art preservation lab. In 2017, the newly discovered trove of approximately 170,000 document pages at the Martynas Mažvydas National Library was added to the project, as were 12,000 document pages recently discovered at the Wroblewski Library.

The digital files will be delivered to YIVO in New York. A special finding aid will be developed for the archival documents, which acknowledges their relationship with the record groups in YIVO’s archives and allows for integrated search results.

Beginning in late 2016, the images began appearing in the Online Public Access catalog of the Center for Jewish History. In mid-January 2018 , they will begin to be available in a federated search from this special project website.