YIVO Purchases Collection of Abraham Sutzkever Correspondence
On March 12, 2014, YIVO purchased a collection of more than 300 letters, poems, drawings, telegrams, and other miscellaneous papers at a Judaica auction by Kestenbaum & Company.
The documents include both prewar and postwar letters to and from Abraham Sutzkever (1913-2010), one of the leading Yiddish poets of the twentieth century. The letters are drawn from the library of the late Leyzer Ran, a native and scholar of Vilna, who after surviving World War II in the Soviet Union, emigrated to Cuba, and eventually the U.S., where he formed a close association with YIVO.
These new materials join the existing archive of Abraham Sutzkever documents at YIVO. 58 collections in the YIVO Archives contain manuscripts or letters by Sutzkever.
Read poems by Abraham Sutzkever.
Letter from Leyzer Ran in Cuba to Abraham Sutzkever and his family in Israel, March 18, 1952. From the Archives of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research.
To request permission for use of this image, please apply in writing to: YIVO Archives, YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, 15 West 16th Street, New York, NY 10011, archives@yivo.cjh.org.
Letter from Abraham Sutzkever on the stationery of the Yiddish literary journal Di goldene keyt (The Golden Chain), March 13, 1962. He comments that a story by Soloveichik was “absurd, but interesting.” From the Archives of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research.
To request permission for use of this image, please apply in writing to: YIVO Archives, YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, 15 West 16th Street, New York, NY 10011, archives@yivo.cjh.org.
Drawing by Abraham Sutzkever in Israel from a letter to Leyzer Ran in New York, 1969. From the Archives of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research.
To request permission for use of this image, please apply in writing to: YIVO Archives, YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, 15 West 16th Street, New York, NY 10011, archives@yivo.cjh.org.
Abraham Sutzkever with the playwright David Pinsky, Tel Aviv, 1953. From the Archives of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research.
To request permission for use of this image, please apply in writing to: YIVO Archives, YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, 15 West 16th Street, New York, NY 10011, archives@yivo.cjh.org.