LibGuides: MC 202: The Transformation of Vilnius (Garnett): Primary Sources

What are primary sources?

Primary sources are materials which provide first-hand evidence of an event, a social movement, or daily life in a particular time and place. Common examples of primary sources are letters, diaries, photographs, and oral history interviews. Depending on your research context, primary sources might also include newspaper articles, data, laws, treaties, or other legal documents.

Digital Collections of Primary Sources

YIVO Vilna Online Library
"The Edward Blank YIVO Vilna Online Collections project is an international project to preserve, digitize, and virtually reunite YIVO’s prewar library and archival collections located in New York City and Vilnius, Lithuania, through a dedicated web portal."

USC Shoah Foundation's Visual History Archive
The USC Shoah Foundation's Visual History Archive allows users to search through and view more than 52,000 video testimonies of survivors and witnesses of genocide.

Initially a repository of Holocaust testimony, the Visual History Archive has expanded to include testimonies from the Armenian Genocide that coincided with World War I, the 1937 Nanjing Massacre in China, and the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda.

***Use Guest login for full access to content; optional personal login account provides additional features such as the ability to save searches.***

Library of Congress
digitized maps, photos, other documents

Yad Vashem Digital Collections
See also Yad Vashem exhibit The Story of the Jewish Community of Vilna: The Jerusalem of Lithuania
US Holocaust Memorial Museum's Holocaust Encyclopedia
primary sources such as photos, letters, documents...

Historic Newspapers and Periodicals

Ethnic American Newspapers from the Balch Collection
This online collection provides extensive coverage of many of the most influential ethnic groups in U.S. history, with an emphasis on Americans of Czech, French, German, Hungarian, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Jewish, Lithuanian, Polish, Slovak and Welsh descent. It features more than 130 fully searchable newspapers in 10 languages from 25 states—including many rare 19th-century titles. 1799-1971.
ProQuest Historical Newspapers
Includes the full text of:
Atlanta Daily World (1931-2010)
Calgary Herald (1883-2010)
Chicago Defender (1909-2010)
Chicago Tribune (1849-2013)
Chinese Newspapers Collection (1832-1953)
Cleveland Call and Post (1934-2010)
Communist Historical Newspaper Collection (1919-2013)
Detroit Free Press (1831-1922)
Indianapolis Star (1903-2004)
Le Monde (1944-2000)
Leftist Newspapers and Periodicals (1845-2015)
Los Angeles Sentinel (1934-2010)
Los Angeles Times (1881-2014)
Louisville Courier Journal (1830-1922) (1830-1922)
Louisville Defender (1951-2010)
Michigan Chronicle (1939-2010)
Minneapolis Star Tribune (1867-2001)
Montreal Gazette (1785-2010)
New York Amsterdam News (1922-2010)
New York Tribune / Herald Tribune (1841-1962)
Norfolk Journal and Guide (1916-2010)
Philadelphia Tribune (1912-2010)
Pittsburgh Courier (1911-2010)
San Francisco Chronicle (1865-1922)
South China Morning Post (1903-2001)
St. Louis Post Dispatch (1874-2003)
The American Hebrew & Jewish Messenger (1857-1922)
The American Israelite (1854-2000)
The Atlanta Constitution (1868-1984)
The Austin American Statesman (1871-1980)
The Baltimore Afro-American (1893-2010)
The Baltimore Sun (1837-1997)
The Boston Globe (1872-1991)
The Christian Science Monitor (1908-2009)
The Cincinnati Enquirer (1841-1922) (1841-1922)
The Globe and Mail (1844-2019)
The Guardian and The Observer (1791-2003)
The Irish Times and The Weekly Irish Times (1859-2021)
The Jerusalem Post (1932-2008)
The Jewish Advocate (1905-1990)
The Jewish Exponent (1887-1990)
The Korea Times (1956-2016)
The Nashville Tennessean
The New York Times (1851-2019)
The Philadelphia Inquirer (1860-2001)
The Province (1894-2010)
The Scotsman (1817-1950)
The Times of India (1838-2010)
The Wall Street Journal (1889-2011)
The Washington Post (1877-2006)
Toronto Star (1894-2020)
U.S. Midwest Collection

Finally, it contains these aggregations: "Ethnic NewsWatch" (1959-present) and "ProQuest Civil War Era" (selected newspapers and pamphlets from 1850-1870).
Periodicals Archive Online
Periodicals Archive Online is the new name for PCI Full Text - an archive of hundreds of digitised journals published in the arts, humanities and social sciences.

It provides researchers with access to more than 200 years of scholarship, spread across a wide variety of subject areas.

Primary Sources in English or English Translation

An American in Warsaw: selected writings of Hugh S. Gibson, US Minister to Poland, 1919-1924 by Vivian Vivian Reed (Editor); M. B. B. Biskupski Jochen Böhler (Editor); Jan-Roman Potocki (Editor)
Call Number: MSU Main Library DK4402 .G532 2018

Publication Date: 2018
Documents on the Holocaust by Yisrael Gutman (Editor); Yitzhak Arad (Editor); Abraham Margaliot (Editor); Lea Ben Dor (Translator); Steven T. Katz (Introduction by)
Call Number: ebook

These 213 documents on the theory, planning, and execution of, and reaction and resistance to, the Nazi plan to exterminate European Jews date from the 1920s through the closing days of World War II and focus on the experience of eastern Europe. nbsp; The crystallization of the principles of Nazi anti-Semitism, the policies of the Third Reich toward the Jews, the period of segregation and enclosed ghettos, and the stages through which the ‘final solution’ were implemented are some of the topics covered. Other documents shed light on Jewish public activities and the organization of the Underground and Jewish self-defense. Many of the documents of Jewish origin were not published previously. This comprehensive collection is essential for understanding the history of the Holocaust.
From a Ruined Garden : the memorial books of Polish Jewry by Jack Kugelmass; Jonathan Boyarin; Zachary M. Baker
Call Number: MSU MAIN LIBRARY DS135.P6 F77 1998

Gathers some 65 selections from the nearly one thousand memorial books published since World War II. This text describes typical market days, communal institutions, prayer houses, peculiar town types, personalities, and local customs and legends, as well as everyday life during the Holocaust and the experiences of returning survivors.
The Golden Tradition by Lucy S. Dawidowicz
"A collection of documents from the 16th century to 1939, demonstrating the changes in Jewish life and thought in Eastern Europe,,,:"

The Jews by Milosz in Against Anti-Semitism: An Anthology of Twentieth-Century Polish Writings
ebook
"The text reproduced here is not a typical Miłosz piece. It is a chapter from his anthology Wyprawa w dwudziestolecie (A Voyage into the Interwar
Years, 1999), in which he brought together historical sources, newspaper editorials, records of parliamentary proceedings, pamphlets, letters, diary entries, and other documents to create a portrait of Poland between 1918 and 1939. In this collage of voices and debates, Miłosz attempted to
come to terms with both the achievements and the wretchedness of this time in Polish history. He did not aim to create an exhaustive historical account but rather wanted to make the interwar decades come alive for contemporary Poles.."

Polish Literature and the Holocaust (1939-1968) by Jan Burzynski (Translator); Slawomir Buryla; Dorota Krawczynska; Jacek Leociak
Call Number: MSU MAIN LIBRARY PG7053.H63 L5813 2020

"Polish Literature and the Holocaust (1939-1968) scrutinizes literary and documentary testimonies produced during or after the extermination of Jews in the Second World War and rooted in that historical, political, and anthropological context. Whether someone wrote a text during or after the war influenced the nature of what was communicated. Hence, the authors divided this publication to separately cover two periods: 1939-1944/45 and 1945-1968. This publication overviews belles-lettres, personal document literature, and press publications. Almost all texts were written in the Polish language."
Profiles of a Lost World: Memoirs of East European Jewish Life before World War II by David E. Fishman (Introduction by); Eva Zeitlin Dodkin; Hirsz Abramowicz; Dina Abramowicz (Volume Editor, Introduction by); Jeffrey Shandler (Volume Editor)
Call Number: MSU Main Library DS135.L52 V551913 1999

Publication Date: 1999

First published in a Yiddish edition in 1958, ""Profiles of a Lost World"" is a source of information about Eastern Europe before World War II as well as an touchstone for understanding a rich and complex cultural environment. Hirsz Abramowicz (1881-1960), a prominent Jewish educator, writer and cultural activist, knew that world and wrote about it, and his writings provide an eyewitness account of Jewish life during the first half of the 20th century. Abramowicz was a witness to war, revolution and major cultural transformations in the Jewish world. His essays, written and originally published in Yiddish between 1920 and 1955, document the local history of Lithuanian Jewry in rural and small-town settings, and in the city of Vilna - the ""Jerusalem of Lithuania"" - which was a major centre of East European Jewish intellectual and cultural life. They shed light on the daily life of Jews and the flourishing of modern Yiddish culture in Eastern Europe during the early 20th century and offer a personal perspective on the rise of Jewish radical politics. The collection incorporates local history of Lithuanian Jewry, shtetl folklore, observations on rural occupations, Jewish education, and life under German occupation during World War I. It also includes a series of profiles of leading social and intellectual Jewish personalities of the author's day, from traditional scholars to revolutionaries. Together the selections provide a blend of social and personal history and a window on a lost world.