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Pre-war Jews

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
Representatives of the Pest Jewish Community visit the community's matzo bakery on Tuzer Street in the 1920s. (Photograph by Kalman Boronkay/ Courtesy CEU Press)
April 25, 2020, 9:14 am
Flavor of prewar Hungarian Jewish life captured in book of recipes and folklore
Andras Koerner, author of Jewish Book Award-winning ‘Jewish Cuisine in Hungary,’ uses untouched culinary traditions to explore centuries of cultural history before the Holocaust
By Rich Tenorio
A scene from 'Vilna,' a new play by Ira Fuchs. (Carol Rosegg)
March 21, 2019, 3:35 am
In new off-Broadway play, an exhausting, achingly human story of prewar Jewry
In ‘Vilna,’ playwright Ira Fuchs animates the turbulent history of an Eastern European Jewish center for a new generation losing sight of its bleak reality
By Jordan Hoffman
Austrian writer Stefan Zweig (public domain)
November 29, 2016, 9:47 am
Letters show paternal side of literary giant Zweig
A trove of previously unseen correspondence highlights Austrian Jewish author’s concern with the fate of Jews, admiration for Zionist visionary Herzl
By Jonah Mandel
Screenshot of children from the 1936 film 'Mir Kumen On (Children Must Laugh).' (Screenshot courtesy of Lobster Films)
November 19, 2016, 5:32 am
‘Saved’ Yiddish propaganda film is haunting glimpse into lost world of pre-war Polish Jewry
1936 documentary ‘Mir Kumen On’ unintentionally portends the horrors that awaited its subjects
By Jordan Hoffman
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