Rare posters from Displaced Persons Camps Digitized
Even as YIVO’s archivists and librarians focus on the mammoth project of digitizing YIVO’s Vilna Collections over the next six years, additional initiatives to make other YIVO collections accessible to the public are underway.
The Center for Jewish History has received a third grant from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany to catalog and digitize materials in its partner organizations’ collections related to the Holocaust and its aftermath. As part of this project, rare photographs of Jewish life in Displaced Persons (DP) camps and posters from the DP camps will be digitized.
1,178 DP camp posters were cataloged, conserved, and digitized by YIVO and Center for Jewish history staff in 2014-2015, thanks to an earlier Claims Conference grant and a grant from the Leon Levy Foundation. The posters, created in 1946-1952 by Jewish and aid organizations and groups at DP camps in Germany, Italy, and Austria, include wall newspapers; announcements for sporting events and political rallies, lectures and the distribution of clothing and other supplies; and instructions of where and how to register for aliyah to Israel. Many are hand-made, hand-painted, one-of-a-kind documents.
The artifacts attest to the surprising vitality of the Holocaust survivors and other Jewish refugees in the DP camps. Despite the uncertainties and discomforts of their temporary homes while they waited for visas, the DPs did not shrink from the task of rebuilding both their own lives and Jewish communal life.
Now, thanks to the new grant from the Claims Conference, the remainder of the collection will be digitized in 2016-2017.
Special thanks to Leanora Lange for assistance in the preparation of this news post.