-For Immediate Release- NEW YORK, APRIL 8, 2008 - Columbia
University Libraries and the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research
announced today a joint initiative to preserve unique and
historically significant South American Yiddish newspapers and
make them accessible to scholars, researchers, and students. In
2001, the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research—a preeminent
research and academic resource center for East European Jewish
Studies—acquired a collection of over 100 South American Yiddish
newspapers and journals covering the years 1933-1956. Many of
the publications in the collection are long out of print, and a
large number of the last remaining copies were destroyed in the
bombing of the Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina (AMIA)
building in Buenos Aires in 1994. Since these unique and
irreplaceable documents are not currently accessible to the
academic community and the general public, YIVO wanted to
preserve its copies on microfilm, and make additional copies of
the films available to research libraries