“Wall newspapers”—large, hand-lettered or typed newsletters posted in a shared communal space—have their roots in Soviet propaganda. Among the rich historical resources available through the Center for Jewish History’s digital collections are wall newspapers that form a portion of YIVO’s Displaced Persons Camps and Centers Poster Collection, RG 294.6. Created in the aftermath of World War II, these fragile documents provide a vivid glimpse…
A human-family tree stands by the renovated genealogy institute at the Center for Jewish History in Manhattan. Photographs of couples, children, families, molecular matter, and, atop the trunk, Rosalind Franklin—the British Jewish scientist whose work helped Watson and Crick imagine the double helix—adorn the branches. (Description via the New York Press.) We’re thrilled to see today’s New York Press story about “the intensity of personal…
By Andrey Filimonov, Archival Services Manager at the Center for Jewish History Screenshots from “Civil Disobedience—Demonstration and Clergy Arrest at Soviet Consulate, November 18, 1985.” Original archival material found in the Records of the Bay Area Council for Soviet Jews and Bay Area Council for Jewish Rescue and Renewal, I-505; box 100; VHS tape 69; American Jewish Historical Society, New York, NY; http://digital.cjh.org/4633168 One…