Esther-Rachel Kaminska Theater Museum Collection
Identifier: RG 8
YIVO Institute for Jewish Research
The collection comprises materials that were once part of the Esther Rachel Kaminska Theater Museum at the YIVO Institute in Vilna. It contains play manuscripts, programs, playbills, posters, photographs, correspondence, agreements, scrapbooks, clippings, printed ephemera, and memorabilia relating to Yiddish theater, primarily in the early twentieth century, especially the interwar period. Also included are items of printed ephemera related to Yiddish film, Hebrew theater, and a broad range of Jewish performers, including cantors, singers and dancers. Geographically, the materials originated predominantly in Poland and other parts of Eastern Europe, and, to a lesser extent, the United States, especially New York City, with smaller numbers of items from Western Europe and other regions around the world.
The collection comprises the following series:
Series I, Performances of Yiddish Theater and Music: Plays, Programs, and Playbills, contains over 200 play manuscripts, as well as some fragments and actors' role books, representing approximately 120 authors, including M. Gershoy, Joseph Lateiner, Isidore Zolatarevsky, Jacob Gordin, L. Boymvol, B. Gorin, Boris Thomashefsky, N. Rakow, and S. Libin; over 500 theater programs; and approximately 2,700 playbills and fliers. Also included are approximately 1,000 oversize posters.
Series II, Theater Personalities, contains theater programs, ephemera, clippings, and manuscript materials arranged under individual name headings. This series includes larger amounts of materials related to Herz Grossbard, David Herman, Joseph Winogradoff, Rudolf Zaslavsky, Zygmunt Turkow, Jonas Turkow, Sam Ludner, Nahum Lipovski, Moyshe Lipman, Ida Kaminska, and Esther Rachel Kaminska, as well as theater programs, clippings, scrapbooks, and miscellaneous manuscript materials pertaining to some 200 other individuals.
Series III, Theaters, Troupes, and General Materials by Geographic Location, contains theater materials, including programs, correspondence, agreements, fliers, and clippings, organized according to geographic locality, and often under headings for specific troupes. The localities include European countries, with Poland by far the best represented; the Soviet Union (as well as a small amount of material from the pre-World War I Russian Empire); Palestine (Eretz Israel; Land of Israel); South America, especially Argentina and Brazil; the United States, especially New York City; and various other regions (Australia, Canada, China, Cuba, and South Africa). The theater companies best represented are the Varshever Yidisher Kunst-Teater (VYKT; Warsaw Yiddish Art Theater), founded by Zygmunt Turkow and Ida Kaminska, in Warsaw; the Vilna Troupe; Yung Teater / Nay Teater (Warsaw; Vilna), under the direction of Michael Weichert; the Moscow State Yiddish Theater (known by its Russian acronym "GOSET"); Maurice Schwartz's Yiddish Art Theatre, of New York; and the Hebrew theater "Habimah." A wide variety of other professional as well as amateur theater groups are represented with smaller amounts of material.
Series IV, Photographs, includes photographs of theater personalities, including portraits of individuals, under approximately 250 name headings; theater scenes from play productions or, in a few instances, film stills; group portraits of theater troupes; group photos of actors in other settings; and a small number of family photographs.
Majority of material found within 1900 - 1939
YIVO Institute for Jewish Research (Organization)
The collection is primarily in Yiddish, German, Russian, Polish, English, and Hebrew, with some materials in or using French, Romanian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Hungarian, Czech, Estonian, Danish, Finnish, Swedish, and Arabic.
The collection has been digitized and is available online without restrictions. The physical collection is closed.
The images, documents, film footage, audio materials, and texts displayed in any portion of this web site may be copyrighted. Permission to use this web site is given on condition that the user agrees to follow U.S. copyright laws. The user agrees that she or he assumes liability for any copyright violations resulting from unauthorized use of items appearing on this web site and to hold YIVO harmless from any action involving copyright infringement. It is the responsibility of the user to carry out a due diligence search under U.S. copyright laws to determine the copyright status of items displayed on this web site.
The Esther Rachel Kaminska Theather Museum was founded in 1926 by Ida Kaminska and her husband Zygmunt Turkow, in honor of Ida Kaminska's mother, the renowned actress Esther Rachel Kaminska (1870-1925), who was widely revered as the "mother of Yiddish theater." The museum opened on 25 January, upon the shloshim, or conclusion of the thirty-day mourning period, following the death of Esther Rachel Kaminska, on 27 December 1925, in the room where she had died, in her apartment at 11 Oboźna Street, in Warsaw. The exhibition initially assembled by Kaminska's daughter and son-in-law included photographs, programs, playbills, posters, albums, and letters documenting Esther Rachel Kaminska's career on the stage, as well as the history of the Yiddish theater generally. The materials were drawn from the papers and memorabilia held by her family, supplemented with items that Zygmunt Turkow had received as donations or loans from fellow actors.1 Among the items on display were costumes that Kaminska had worn for her famous performances in Jacob Gordin's plays "Mirele Efros" and "Der umbakanter" (The Stranger).2
As Ida Kaminska and Zygmunt Turkow continued to receive donations of materials related to Yiddish theater, the collection grew, and in 1927 they donated the museum to the recently founded YIVO Institute in Vilna (Vilnius, Lithuania), which during the interwar period was part of the Second Polish Republic and known as Wilno. At the time that YIVO held its first conference, in October 1929, the Esther-Rachel Kaminska Theater Museum was reported to comprise over 1,300 cataloged items, of which 400 were exhibited, and the rest kept in the museum's archive.3 The most significant groupings of materials stemmed from donations of the Yidisher Artistn Fareyn (Yiddish Actors' Union), headquartered in Warsaw; theater director Nahum Lipovski; and the Rappel family. Smaller amounts of materials had been received from Iser Bezman, Isaac Perkoff, K. Ebel, Z. Zylbercweig, A. Kolodny, and H. Torczyner, among others.3 Subsequently, YIVO volunteer zamlers, or collectors, gathered further materials related to Yiddish theater that were then added to the Esther-Rachel Kaminska Theater Museum.4 After YIVO moved into its own building at 18 Wiwulski Street, in Vilna, at the beginning of 1933, the Theater Museum had its own exhibition space and storage area, and a dedicated staff.5 The director of the Theater Museum at YIVO Vilna, from fall 1928 until the demise of the institute in 1941, was Uma Olkenicki.6
Following the Second World War, rescued materials identified as once belonging to the Esther-Rachel Kaminska Theater Museum in YIVO Vilna were brought together again at the YIVO Institute in New York as Record Group 8 (RG 8). In the late 1950s to mid 1960s, these materials were sorted and organized by Jonas Turkow (1898-1988), who also inventoried many of the programs and playbills at the item level, producing a catalog of index cards handwritten in Yiddish. An actor and director in Yiddish theater, Jonas Turkow – who was a younger brother of Zygmunt Turkow – had immigrated to the United States in 1947, and began to work in the YIVO archives in 1958.7 In 1966 he immigrated to Israel; he died in Tel Aviv.
Shapiro, p. 512.
"Barikht fun Teater-Muzey," p. 74.
Web, p. 173.
Quint.
Shapiro, p. 518; Web, p. 181.
"Turkow," Encyclopaedia Judaica.
"Barikht fun Teater-Muzey afn nomen fun Ester-Rokhl Kaminski," in: Barikht fun der konferents fun dem Yidishn Visnshaftlekhn Institut opgehaltn in Vilne fun 24tn bizn 27tn Oktober 1929. Vilna: Yidisher Visnshaftlekher Institut, 1930. pp. 74-79.
Quint, Alyssa. "Visual Artists and Yiddish Avant-garde Theatre in Poland." Digital Yiddish Theatre Project. June 2018. yiddishstage.org
Shapiro, Fanny. "Der teater-muzey afn nomen fun Ester-Rokhl Kaminiski baym YIVO." In: Arkhiv far der geshikhte fun Yidishn teater un drame. Vol. I. Ed. J. Schatzky. Ṿilna; New York: Yidisher Visnshaftlekher Institut, 1930. pp. 512-518.
"Turkow." Encyclopaedia Judaica. 2nd edition. New York: Macmillan Reference USA/Thomson Gale, 2007. Vol. 20, p. 203, section "Jonas Turkow."
Web, Marek. "Tsu der geshikhte funem yivo-arkhiv." YIVO Bleter. Vol. XLVI (1980). pp. 168-191.
39.4 Linear Feet (99 boxes; 2,281 folders; also includes approximately 1,000 posters stored in map drawers)
The collection contains play manuscripts, programs, playbills, posters, photographs, correspondence, agreements, scrapbooks, clippings, printed ephemera, and memorabilia relating to Yiddish theater primarily in the early twentieth century, especially the interwar period. Also included are items of printed ephemera related to Yiddish film, Hebrew theater, and a broad range of Jewish performers, including cantors, singers and dancers. Geographically, the materials originate predominantly in Poland and other parts of Eastern Europe, and, to a lesser extent, the United States, especially New York City, and Western Europe, with some materials from Palestine (Eretz Israel), South America, and other regions around the world. Among the theater personalities represented in the collection with significant amounts of material are Herz Grossbard, David Herman, Joseph Winogradoff, Rudolf Zaslavsky, Zygmunt Turkow, Jonas Turkow, Moyshe Lipman, Ida Kaminska, and Esther Rachel Kaminska. The theater groups best represented include the Varshever Yidisher Kunst-Teater (VYKT; Warsaw Yiddish Art Theater), founded by Zygmunt Turkow and Ida Kaminska; the Vilna Troupe; Yung Teater / Nay Teater (Warsaw; Vilna), under the direction of Michael Weichert; the Moscow State Yiddish Theater (known by its Russian acronym "GOSET"); Maurice Schwartz's Yiddish Art Theatre, of New York; and the Hebrew theater "Habimah." A wide variety of other professional as well as amateur theater groups are represented with smaller amounts of material.
The collection is arranged in the following series:
Performances of Yiddish Theater and Music: Plays, Programs, Playbills, and Posters, 1894-1942
Theater Personalities, 1888-1940
Theaters, Troupes, and General Materials by Geographic Location, undated, 1887-1888, 1907-1941
Photographs, undated, 1904-1938
Other Finding Aid
The original handwritten inventory (in Yiddish) of the play manuscripts (Subseries I.1), produced at the YIVO Institute in New York, sometime in the post-World War II period, is kept on file at YIVO. Also on file is the card catalog of index cards on which Jonas Turkow recorded, by hand, in Yiddish, item-level descriptions of most of the programs, playbills, and posters found in the collection, during his work at the YIVO Institute in New York in the late 1950s to mid 1960s. The card catalog encompasses all of the programs and playbills in Series I; and most of the programs found throughout Series II and III.
The Esther Rachel Kaminska Theater Museum at the YIVO Institute in Vilna originally encompassed all of YIVO's holdings related to theater, including the records of the Yidisher Artistn Fareyn (Yiddish Actors' Union), headquartered in Warsaw, which regularly contributed materials to the Theater Museum, and permanently transferred its archived records to YIVO in fall 1936. While the present collection contains materials such as ephemera and clippings related to the YAF, its institutional records are found in another YIVO collection, RG 26, Records of the Yidisher Artistn Farayn (Yiddish Actors' Union).
A small grouping of documents from the Esther Rachel Kaminska Theater Museum can be found in Series III ("Theater Documents") of the Abraham Sutzkever-Szmerke Kaczerginski Historical Collection (RG 223.2). Also, materials from the Esther Rachel Kaminska Theater Museum, especially some related to items in Subseries I.1 (Play Manuscripts) of the current collection, have been documented and digitized as part of Records of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in the Lithuanian Central State Archives (RG 8000), Shipping Lists 3, 8, and 18.
The following collections held at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research contain materials related to Yiddish theater and musical performances from roughly the same time period as those found in the Esther Rachel Kaminska Theater Museum Collection:
RG 7, Music (Vilna Archives) – manuscripts of musical works for the Yiddish theater
RG 37, Jewish Music Societies Collection
RG 114, Plays – manuscripts of plays for the Yiddish theater
RG 289, Sholem Perlmutter Papers – a wide variety of Yiddish theater materials gathered by Perlmutter, dating from the 1880s to the 1950s
In addition, YIVO holds collections of personal papers of some of the theater personalities found in the present collection, including: Alexander Asro and Sonia Alomis (RG 729), Joseph Buloff and Luba Kadison (RG 1146), Misha Fishzon and Vera Zaslavska (RG 203), Jacob Gordin (RG 530), Chayele Grober (RG 590), David Herman (RG 209), Leon Kobrin (RG 376), Molly Picon (RG 738), Jacob Mestel (RG 280), Moshe Schorr (RG 499), Mark Schweid (RG 357), Anshel Shor and Dora Weissman (RG 689), Jacob Waislitz (RG 633), and Michael Weichert (RG 532).
In the postwar period, the Yiddish actor and director Jonas Turkow, who worked at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York in the late 1950s to mid 1960s, partially processed the collection. In particular, he inventoried the play manuscripts, and cataloged most of the programs, playbills, and posters at the item level, preparing handwritten descriptions on index cards. Series I comprises the portion of the collection (approximately half of it by extent) that Turkow organized and arranged in a systematic way. That portion of the collection was also assigned folder numbers according to a system in place at YIVO at the time, of numbering folders consecutively from one collection to the next, and also of stamping individual pages or items with consecutive numbers. Around the same time, Turkow, or other archivists at YIVO, sorted the remaining portions of the collection (which now constitute Series II to IV) into major groupings related to performers and theater troupes, as well as under general geographic headings. The theater programs that Turkow had cataloged were distributed among the groupings in accordance with the cross-references he provided on the catalog cards he created for them.
During processing for the Edward Blank YIVO Vilna Online Collections project (2015-2022), the collection received conservation treatment and was re-foldered into acid-free archival folders. Turkow's arrangement of the first part of the collection (Series I) was retained intact, with minor revisions. The remaining, unprocessed portion of the collection, including a large amount of unsorted clippings, ephemera, and miscellaneous materials, was fully examined and arranged, incorporating and refining existing groupings and preliminary arrangement.
Within the previously unprocessed portions of the collection, some materials were identified as constituting institutional records of the Yidisher Artistn Fareyn (Yiddish Actors' Union), whose records are found in another YIVO collection, RG 26, Records of the Yidisher Artistn Farayn (Yiddish Actors' Union); these materials were removed to RG 26, where they can be found in the Addendum (Series IV).
Also during processing for the Edward Blank YIVO Vilna Online Collections project, a few theater-related items that previously had been filed in RG 26, the Yiddish Actors' Union records, were incorporated into the present collection; these items pertain to the following individuals (with the RG 8 folder number noted): Ahrony, Shalom (program, under: Chicago; Folder 936); Alexandrovitch, Misha (Folder 48); Arden, Cecil (program, under: New York; Folder 913); Brody, Joseph (Folder 150), Bretanitski, Semyon L. (report on anniversary celebration, under: Azerbaijan - Baku; Folder 792); Davidov, Aleksandr (Folder 165); Ebel, Kalman (six items added to Folder 231); Fishzon, Avrom (two manuscript pages and several clippings added to Folder 239); Goldstein, Jennie (ticket, Hopkinson Theatre, under: New York; Folder 900); Goldwasser (chazan) (Folder 155); Golub, Solomon (two programs added to Folder 32); Gradova, Gitta (Folder 162); Groper, Joseph (empty envelope, placed with ephemera related to the YIVO Vilna Theater Museum, Folder 1015); Harris, Al (one flier added to Folder 171); Harris, Chaim (Folder 172); Herschman, Mordechai (two fliers added to Folder 46); Jaldati, Lin (Folder 194); Kirschenbaum, Jacob (Folder 254); Lando, Sarah (Folder 201); Jitomirsky, Jacques (Folder 185); Roitman, David (Folder 262); Runich, Osip (Folder 263); Shatzky, Jacob (Joseph Rumshinsky Testimonial Committee; Folder 497); Sirota, Gershon (Folder 230); Schorr, Baruch (Folder 269); Shkolnik, Grigori S. (Folder 276); Weiman, E. (Folder 176); and Weinstock, Joseph (Folder 178).
Adler, Julius, 1880-
An-Ski, S., 1863-1920
Authors, Yiddish
Boymṿol, L., 1892-1920
Buenos Aires (Argentina)
Cantors (Judaism)
Europe, Eastern
Fliers (printed matter)
Gershoy, M., 1864-1937
Goldfaden, Abraham, 1840-1908
Gordin, Jacob, 1853-1909
Gorin, B., 1868-1925
Herman, David, 1876-1937
Jewish actors
Jewish authors
Kaminska, Ida
Laṭayner, Yosef, 1853-1935
Libin, Z. (Zalman), 1872-1955
Lipovski, Nachum
Lʹviv (Ukraine)
Printed ephemera
Scripts (documents)
Sholem Aleichem, 1859-1916
Theater, Yiddish -- Yiddish Drama
Thomashefsky, Boris
Turkow, Zygmunt, 1896-1970
Zlatarewski, I., 1875-1945
Łódź (Poland)
Ṿilner trupe
Guide to the Esther Rachel Kaminska Theater Museum Collection, 1887-1942 (bulk 1900-1939)
Originally processed by Jonas Turkow in the late 1950s to mid 1960s. Materials further processed, described, and prepared for digitization, and finding aid encoded by Violet Lutz in 2021.
Description is in English, with some renderings of names and titles also in Yiddish.
Processed, conserved and digitized as part of the Edward Blank YIVO Vilna Online Collections project (2015-2022). Additional work funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the M.K.S. Charitable Remainder Unitrust.
Part of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research Repository
https://yivo.org/
Published citations should take the following form: Identification of item, date (if known); Esther-Rachel Kaminska Theater Museum Collection; RG 8; box number (if applicable); folder number; YIVO Institute for Jewish Research.
Published citations should take the following form: Identification of item, date (if known); Esther-Rachel Kaminska Theater Museum Collection; RG 8; box number (if applicable); folder number; YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. https://archives.cjh.org/repositories/7/resources/19907 Accessed January 20, 2022.