Jonathan Brent still feels the hair on the back of his neck stand when he imagines the scene: The phone rings, and an older historian answers. On the other line, a voice tells him about the documents revealing more than 1,000 years of Jewish tradition. They were not destroyed by Nazis, as he believed for decades. His life’s work—and the efforts of his colleagues, friends and other intellectuals—had been found.
The man was Max Weinreich, one of many scholars who in 1925 helped establish the YIVO Institute in Vilna, Lithuania. The group’s collective goal was to achieve something no one had done before: A study of historic Jewish culture in Eastern Europe. Their work resulted in documents, books, photographs and other archival material chronicling a little-known past for the first time.
But at the height of the Second World War, Nazi units throughout Europe were tasked with seizing Jewish historical artifacts in an effort to commit cultural annihilation. They hit a jackpot when they found YIVO and looted thousands and thousands of materials. The artifacts weren’t thrown away, but instead sorted and secured to be one day placed in the Nazi-planned Museum of an Extinct Race.
“What was contained in those books and documents explained how people put their shoes on in the morning, how they said hello, how they talked to their children. The Nazis were stealing not just books, but the collective memory of the people,” Dr. Brent said.
Dr. Brent, now executive director of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, painted the scene Tuesday at the Embassy of the Republic of Poland, which hosted this year’s Frieda Kobernick Fleischman Lecture, organized by the George Washington University’s Program in Judaic Studies. The theme, “The Last Books: Recovering the East European Jewish Past,” examined the fate of books and manuscripts hidden by Nazis and Soviets—and the unbelievable page in history that has been turned now that these materials have resurfaced.
Poland’s Ambassador to the U.S. Ryszard Schnepf and Columbian College of Arts and Sciences Dean Ben Vinson III provided opening remarks, describing the significance of the Fleischman Lecture’s subject.
“Tonight’s topic is a timely discussion of long-lost treasures. As regions of the world continue to grapple with issues involving challenges to human rights, we must never forget the mistakes of our past,” Dr. Vinson said.
Jenna Weissman Joselit, director of the Program in Judaic Studies, quoted historian Lucy Dawidowicz, who called the Lithuanian city of Vilna the former “world capital of the realm of Yiddish.” That history, she said, now exists only as a memory.
Dr. Brent said that scholars in Vilna established the YIVO Institute to collect what they thought would illuminate Jewish ancestry in Eastern Europe, storing everything from circa 1900 Russian cigarette boxes to rough drafts of play manuscripts. They understood Eastern European roots to be an inherent part of Jewish identity.
“These 1,000 years in Eastern Europe permeated all aspects of our life, our language, our customs, our songs, our thinking, our poetry, our music. How can we understand ourselves without understanding that?” Dr. Brent said.
Hollywood took a stab at portraying how the documents were reclaimed in the film “Monuments Men,” but Dr. Brent said that the true account is rife with complexities and “stories within stories within stories.” After the war, the Library of Congress worked with the U.S. Army to recover lost Jewish artifacts. Major Seymour Pomrenze was appointed as the head of Germany’s Offenbach Archival Depot, where much of the YIVO collection was found. He contacted scholars like Mr. Weinreich and began the process of returning materials, sending some to New York, where the YIVO Institute was re-established.
Simultaneously, archivists in Vilna led a search to find lost materials for a new Jewish museum. A number of documents had been hidden during the war by scholars known as the “Paper Brigade,” who smuggled pieces under their clothing and hid them in a ghetto. Many died, but some of the items they saved were found.
Dreams for a Vilna museum were sadly dashed. Dr. Brent described anti-Jewish campaigns authorized by Soviet forces in the late 1940s. Soviets packed up thousands of documents and shipped them to a pulping mill to be eviscerated. But a hero emerged—Lithuanian librarian Antanas Ulpis could read Yiddish, and he noted the importance of the archives. He and a group of colleagues traveled in the dead of night to move boxes from the pulping mill, storing them safely in the basement of a Catholic church, where they remained until 1989.
“This is a time when to violate a command of the Soviet government meant a bullet through the head,” Dr. Brent said. “Not until the Soviet Union completely collapses in 1991 do they announce that they have our documents, in the original bags Antanas Ulpis put them in.”
The documents were sent to New York City to be cleaned and processed. Unfortunately, about 10 boxes were lost along the way. Some material remains in Vilna, but requires major restoration and conservation. The YIVO Institute is currently working with the Lithuanian government on the Vilna Project to repair the documents and unite them with the New York City collection in a comprehensive archive, which will eventually be digitized.
Today, there is an empty lot where the once vibrant YIVO Institute thrived in Vilna. Dr. Brent recently told the story of YIVO at a lecture in Lithuania, and a young woman approached him with tears in her eyes. She said she had no idea such a Jewish history existed in the city.
“She didn’t know because no one had told her, because of this empty lot,” Dr. Brent said. “[Telling this story] is our responsibility, and it’s what restoring this history is all about.”