YIVO

The Yidisher Visnshaftlekher Institut (YIVO) is an organization that preserves, studies, and teaches the cultural history of Jewish life throughout Eastern Europe, Germany and Russia, as well as subjects related to the Yiddish language.

The organization was founded at a Berlin conference in 1925. It was headquartered in Wilno in Poland before being moved to New York City before WWII. It has branches in many other countries. Before the move to New York City, the English name was the Yiddish Scientific Institute. Afterwards it is the Institute for Jewish Research. It is still primarily known by its Yiddish "YIVO" acronym.

YIVO and the Holocaust

YIVO has been involved in the politically correct view on the Holocaust, such as by submitting National Socialist documents "processed" by YIVO to the Nuremberg trials. This included documents "acquired" by the Jewish Szajko Frydman, a notorious collector, trader, and thief of documents related to Jewish issues.

See also Posen speeches: Szajko Frydman/Zosa Szajkowsk and The Yiddish Scientific Institute of New York.

YIVO states that "During the war, it was the first organization to bring word of the unfolding catastrophe to the American public. [...] At the end of the war, YIVO became the pioneer of Holocaust studies avant la lettre, immediately recruiting zamlers to collect survivors’ testimonies and documents from displaced persons camps. In 1946, it published Weinreich’s Hitler’s Professors and later collaborated with Israel’s Yad Vashem Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Memorial Authority to produce 15 volumes of Holocaust bibliographies (1960–1978)."