– His name was Arthur Seyss-Inquart. He was a notorious anti-Semite. He was responsible for the incarceration and deportation of thousands of Jews and others to concentration camps. He had this portrait of
himself painted, probably, by a Jew who was a prisoner. And, he had it painted on a Torah scroll. And, this was a way for the Nazis to, not only exterminate the Jews, but
to destroy their culture, and humiliate them in ways. – Literally paint over. – Right. – Their culture with his face. (somber synthesizer notes) The Institute for Jewish Research, known as YIVO, maintains
the largest collection of documents and artifacts pertaining to Eastern European Jewish life. Its knowledge was not, however, always kept safe behind the
institute’s impressive walls. Much of it was recovered,
literally unearthed, after brave researchers formed a brigade to smuggle it away from Nazis. Today at YIVO, that which was underground is finally being brought to light. (somber synthesizer notes) – Scholars got together, and they decided that the time had come. Partly because of the
dangers that were felt by modernity on the one hand, World War I taught them
that the Jewish population of Eastern Europe and Russia
was under grave threat. So they got together in Berlin in 1925 to discuss creating an
institute that would study their history and try to preserve it. So the study of history was
an attempt at preserving. What we call the Vilna Collections, that original component of
YIVO that was accumulated between 1925, when it was founded, and 1941, when it was destroyed, that’s about two million, two and a half million, maybe
three million documents. We have 23 million documents. – Goodness. – We have materials from
all over the Jewish world. (door handle clicks) (footsteps) – From this point here, these are the materials that were shipped to Germany from
Vilna during the war. And that goes to this shelf right here. – This one? – Right. All this material right here, is the material that was smuggled out of the YIVO
building during the war. – Gotcha. – And buried in the ghetto. – Yeah. – And then smuggled out
of the Soviet Union. – And it says, series: Vilna
Ghetto on all of these. – Right. – This is the stuff that
they literally pulled up from underground, wow. – In June 1941, the Nazis
attacked the Soviet Union, and Vilna’s overrun, and, the Nazis occupy Vilna. So, there was an institute in Frankfort called the Institute for Research on the Jewish Question. And, essentially, that was an organization that was created to research Jews without Jews. They organized a slave
labor brigade of Jews from the ghetto to leave the ghetto every day, and come to the YIVO building to catalog and pack these materials, and send it to Germany to be part of this Institute for Research
on the Jewish Question. This is the collection
of Nachman Zonabend. This was a man who was a
prisoner in the Lodz ghetto. And, he survived the
liquidation of the ghetto and, after it was liquidated, he was forced by the Germans
to clean up the ghetto. And, what he did was he started to clean up ghetto offices. And, he began to collect
materials and hide them in various places in the ghetto. When the Nazis were driven
out and the war ended, he went back to the ghetto,
and began to dig them up. And, in 1947, he donated them to YIVO. – It’s like Peter Pan, you know. He comes at the beginning,
and he’s lost his shadow. And, he can’t live without his shadow. You have to have your shadow. And that’s what YIVO is doing. We are stitching the
shadow back to ourselves. Because it was ripped away. – The shadow is what happens when you cast light on something. So you’re kind of doing both. – Exactly, yeah, yeah. – What do we have on this
shelf here behind me? – So, we have the papers of HIAS, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society. (somber drumbeats) You know, each one of them has all of these papers and letters. – You’re never sure how
each paper is related, it could be a State Department paper, it could be just a letter somebody wrote. – Exactly. And, at the end of the day,
the volunteers hands are black. You can see even my fingers,
just from touching a few are, you know, just. One of those is the
case file of Otto Frank, which of course, is
Anne Frank’s father. Obviously, we know that Otto Frank was unsuccessful in getting his family out. And in fact, Otto Frank is the only one of his family members
that survived the war. His wife and two daughters die. But, reading through this file, you just see the desperate
measures that he takes to try to get his family out. So it says, “We were advised that
a Mr. Julius Hollander “and his brother Walter
had provided affidavits “for Mr. And Mrs. Frank and their family. “Another affidavit had
been given for the mother “of the two brothers Hollander. “These were sent to
Holland on May 10, 1941. “Mr. Walter Hollander procured
a supplementary affidavit “of support from his employer, “another affidavit was
given by another stranger. “The latter two affidavits
were used for the two children “of Mr. Otto Frank. “The affidavits submitted by
Julius and Walter Hollander “were for Mr. And Mrs. Frank, “and for their mother,
Mrs. Rosa Hollander, “who was living with
the Franks in Holland.” (somber music) – It’s just, it’s paperwork. It’s just government paperwork. Somebody just put a piece
of paper in a typewriter, on Wednesday, and people died. Sorry, that’s, whew. – So this is a log book from Auschwitz. It’s a to and from book. It’s a coming and going book. It’s entering the block, and then leaving the block. Leaving the block usually
means leaving you’re dead. – Yeah. And the handwriting’s the same. That’s also, it’s like, insofar, like, this was just one dude’s job. Like, I’m looking, he does
his K’s and his L’s stupid. And, he just sat there writing them down. And probably just crayoned them all off. – Yeah. – Because that was his job. – Right. – Is there anyone who isn’t crossed out? – No, everyone is pretty much crossed out. No one survived. And, what’s interesting
is really, this is just part of the administrativa of death in a concentration camp. – It’s a notebook, like, it’s
a regular black notebook. – Right, right. – And, everybody. (somber drumbeats) – So this is a book of Rosh Hashanah or, New Year’s greetings, presented to Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski, the head of the Judenrat. (soft chimes) From all of the children who were in the Lodz Ghetto school system. They wrote a greeting to Rumkowski, saying, thank you for the
food that you provide. Or, for the schooling that you provide. It’s because he really was
in charge of, oftentimes, rations, and those things. There were about a little
over 14,000 children plus over 700 teachers. – [Alexis] Do you know
about how old they were? – So, everything from elementary to several vocational schools that existed in the ghetto. Out of these 14,000-some odd children, only 200 of them survived the war. So, this book contains the last remnants of these kids. You know, these signatures are what is left behind of most of these children. – It’s overwhelming, because, I mean, they didn’t know that that might be the last anyone might
ever have of their name. If they didn’t have
siblings who had children, who survived, then like, that’s all you get. – Nachman Blumental was an ordinary high school teacher. He happened to, at the
outbreak of the war, he happened to find
himself in the Soviet zone, and there he stayed, but his wife and child were in the German zone, and they were murdered. After the war, he comes back. And, though his heart may have
been filled with vengeance, and should have been, in my view, he did something remarkable. Instead of killing the guy who had shot his wife and his son, he interviewed him. I mean, think about this. And not only did he interview
him, but he interviewed all of the people in the town who observed this Polish policeman who had shot his wife and son. – These are Blumental’s handwritten notes on interviews he conducted with Poles who were there, with onlookers who were there when his wife and son were picked up by the police officer
and eventually murdered. And so, you can see it’s
very difficult to read. It’s in Polish. But, part of the account
states that people just were standing around watching while the police officers forced his wife to undress, first the son, and then herself. So, his wife was masquerading as a Christian. And, of course the son, once they took his clothes off, they could very easily
see that he was a Jew. And, just the account goes on to say that people were standing there. You know, inside of here is, the leather shoe of Ariel Blumental. – That the baby was wearing. – Of Nachman Blumental’s son when, presumably he exhumed the body. And, the cross that his wife wearing. – [Alexis] She was
pretending to be Christian. – [Stefanie] She
was pretending, right. – He was one of the founders of the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw, and he was one of the founders of the project of what was called the
historical commissions, after the war, to take
eyewitness testimony. One of the most important things that is contained in this archive is his work on Nazi language. And so, he began a study of Nazi language. So that someone who was gassed was said to have simply exited. Human beings were called inventory. Someone who comes into Auschwitz checks in. So it’s like a hotel. And, he traces this in hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of different ways in the Nazi perversion of the German language. (soft music) Paying attention to the smallest things. That’s what YIVO is all about. That’s what art is all about. (soft piano music) Paying attention to details. And, what this whole institute
is trying to tell you is that every detail matters. This pen. These glasses. This thing. We don’t even know what these are, but a hundred years from
now, you look at this, you’ll say, oh yeah, that tells
you something significant. About that moment. – The Blumental Collection is
only the most recent archive to make its way to YIVO, and it’s impossible to know
how much more knowledge is waiting to be rediscovered. At YIVO, everything has
a place and a purpose. And nothing is too small
to matter to the great work of rebuilding a heritage lost.