Founded in 1925 in Vilna, Poland as the Yiddish Scientific Institute and headquartered in New York since 1940, YIVO is devoted to the history, society, and culture of Ashkenazic Jewry, and the influence of that culture as it has developed in the Americas. As the only pre-Holocaust scholarly institution to transfer its mission to the United States, YIVO is the preeminent center for the study of East European Jewry and Yiddish language, literature, and folklore.
The YIVO Library contains over 350,000 volumes, including works in Yiddish, Hebrew, Russian, English, French, German, and other languages. The library’s collection encompasses the history and culture of East European Jewry before World War II, American Jewish history with a focus on immigration and acculturation, and the Holocaust. For family historians, the YIVO library possesses rich resources for learning about towns and individuals.
The record types indicated by the tabs at the left is a selection of the major library holdings relevant for genealogical research. Books marked Reading Room can be found in the Lillian Goldman Reading Room, and those marked Genealogy Institute, in the Ackman & Ziff Family Genealogy Institute. Both rooms are located on the 3rd floor at the Center for Jewish History. For holdings specific to your research questions, you may search the Center for Jewish History’s online catalog by town name, family name, or other relevant subjects at https://search.cjh.org. Please note that a search by town or region name may prove to be more fruitful, since most library materials have not been catalogued by family name.
For additional resources on tracing families during the Holocaust era, please see our online Holocaust research guide.
YIVO Institute for Jewish Research 15 West 16th Street New York, NY 10011 (212) 246-6080 libraryinquiries@yivo.cjh.org
Search the collections at the Center for Jewish History