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pre-Holocaust life

Guests at Art and Fashion Café, Warsaw, 1930s. (Public domain via Polish National Digital Archives)
April 7, 2026, 7:48 pm
In glitzy interwar Warsaw, truth meets fiction as 2 young women hunt for missing mentor
In ‘The Last Woman of Warsaw,’ out April 7, author Judy Batalion shows the Jewish diversity of the cosmopolitan city as an odd couple sets out to solve a mystery
By Renee Ghert-Zand
Educator Susannah Trubman walks a group from Hunter College through the YIVO Learning and Media Center, February 11, 2026. (Luke Tress/Times of Israel)
March 1, 2026, 5:10 pm
As US Jews reckon with antisemitism uptick, a NY institution doubles down on education
Questions abound on whether outreach is worth the investment in today’s climate, but a recently opened center for students at YIVO institute is all-in on sharing pre-Holocaust Jewish life
By Luke Tress
Illustrative: Leaders of the New York-based YIVO open crates of salvaged YIVO treasures from Europe, photographed in New Jersey, 1947. (Courtesy of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research)
March 21, 2025, 4:17 pm
Dirty jokes and sacred texts: YIVO marks 100 years of preserving Yiddish culture
Artifacts from 1,000 years of Ashkenazi Jewish life including literary transcripts, Herzl’s diary, everyday notes and children’s scrawls connect prewar Jews with generations to come
By Cathryn J. Prince
Townspeople of the predominantly Jewish village of Nasielsk, Poland, in 1938 as seen in Bianca Stigter’s 'Three Minutes - A Lengthening.' (Image courtesy of Family Affair Films, © US Holocaust Memorial Museum)
August 17, 2022, 8:48 pm
Lost for decades, 3 minutes of pre-Holocaust life becomes a full-length documentary
Out on August 19, a new film, ‘Three Minutes – A Lengthening,’ by Dutch filmmaker Bianca Stigter, looks in depth at recovered footage of a Polish town prior to its devastation
By Jordan Hoffman
A program cover from a 1920s Yiddish Press Ball in Warsaw is shown before and after conservation treatment. It and thousands of other posters can be seen as part of the Edward Blank YIVO Vilna Online Collections project. (YIVO/ via JTA)
January 13, 2022, 4:04 am
From reverent to raunchy, YIVO’s vast archives of Yiddish life are reunited online
After surviving decades hidden from Nazi and Soviet forces and years more of litigation over ownership, a priceless trove is now accessible to researchers and the public
By Andrew Silow-Carroll
The Auschwitz Jewish Center in Oswiecim, Poland, comprises the only synagogue that the Germans did not destroy there. (Cnaan Liphshiz)
November 20, 2021, 9:44 pm
A mile from Auschwitz, a restored synagogue recalls thriving Jewish life in Oswiecim
For centuries before the Holocaust, Jews flourished in a town known for its railway connections. Now, the house of prayer is the final testament to the community’s heyday
By Cnaan Liphshiz
The author's grandmother, Jenny Katz, in 1927, the year before she married Siegfried Bachenheimer. At right is the autograph book that she shared with friends and family as a 14-year-old girl in 1916. (Courtesy Steve North/ via JTA)
November 13, 2021, 3:06 am
Pre-Holocaust childhood autograph book delights researchers and romantics
A German-Jewish grandmother’s Poesiealbum is one of few that made it through WWII, and shows warm turn-of-the-century friendships between an Orthodox Jew and her Gentile neighbors
By Steve North
Burial society records from Miskolc, Hungary, between 1934-1942 that were saved from an August 24, 2021 auction by the National Library of Israel and the Hungarian Jewish Museum and Archives. (Courtesy Kedem Auction House)
September 6, 2021, 4:38 pm
Pre-Holocaust Jewish communal records saved from the auction block
Documents detailing births, deaths and marriages dating back to the 19th century are purchased by the National Library of Israel and the Hungarian Jewish Museum and Archives
By Yaakov Schwartz
Brothers Patric and Frank Levy, aboard their float at the Cologne carnival, or Rosenmontag, in 2019. (Toby Axelrod)
March 22, 2019, 6:28 am
German Jews go all in with a Catholic Carnival tradition
For the first time since the 1930s, when the Nazis forbade Jewish participation in the festivities, a Jewish club marches in Cologne, joining the revelry under its own banner
By Toby Axelrod
Betti Rosenbaum Bachenheimer, namesake of the author's mother and original writer of the recipe book; one of the original recipes, handwritten in ancient German script. (Courtesy)
October 22, 2018, 2:34 pm
A great-grandma’s recipes recall sweet stories of pre-Holocaust life in Germany
Strangers across the globe share in some unexpected lessons when one reporter’s mother rediscovers a long-lost cookbook handwritten in ancient German script
By Steve North
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