Territorial Collection: Poland I, Poland II, Poland III

POLAND I.. 1919-1939. Materials on Jewish life in Poland before 1939 consisting of letters, essays, reports, correspondence and clippings which pertain to the political situation, economic conditions and cultural activities of Polish Jews. Included are documents relating to various organizations. Press reports and other materials of the Morgenthau Commission which investigated the pogroms of 1918. Scrapbook about the pogrom in Przytyk, 1936.  Materials on some 130 communities. Materials about Yiddish education in the TSYSHO schools and about vocational courses for Jewish students.

POLAND II. 1939-1945. Materials on the Holocaust relate to communities, ghettos and concentration camps, including Aleksandrow, Auschwitz (Oswiecim), Bedzin, Brzesc, Chelmno, Czestochowa, Garwolin, Iwaniska, Krakow, Lipno, Luck, Lwow, Majdanek, MIedzyrzec, Ostrowiec, Ostrow Mazowiecka, Parysow, Radom, Radomsko, Serock, Sosnowiec, Stanislawow, Tarnow, Treblinka, Zyrardow. Included are some eyewitness accounts.

Materials relating to the resistance movement, including pages of the underground press. A letter from Emmanuel Ringelblum and Adolf Berman (sent from Warsaw in March 1944 and transmitted in code to YIVO in New York via London) describing the killing of the members of the intelligentsia in the Warsaw ghetto. Press articles written after the war about Jewish resistance. Materials about the Warsaw ghetto uprising. Letters from Nazi-occupied Poland sent abroad. Materials about war crimes trials, 1946-1950. Texts of poems and songs written in the ghetto.

POLAND III. Materials on Jews in Poland after World War II pertain to efforts to reconstruct Jewish life in that country. Included is correspondence, printed matter, lists of survivors and other documents from the following organizations: Central Committee of Polish Jews, Central Jewish Historical Commission, Jewish Cultural Association, Bund, Poalei Zion, ORT.