Guide to the Papers of Khaykl Lunski (ca. 1881-ca. 1942)
1885-1941
bulk 1900-1935

RG 58

Processed by Ezekiel Lipschutz, Chava Lapin and Rivka Schiller. Additional processing by Rachel S. Harrison.

With the assistance of a grant from the Gruss Lipper Family Foundation. Described and encoded as part of the CJH Holocaust Resource Initiative, made possible by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany

YIVO Institute for Jewish Research

Center for Jewish History

15 West 16th Street

New York, NY 10011

Phone: (212) 246-6080

Fax: (212) 292-1892

Email: archives@yivo.cjh.org

URL: http://www.yivoinstitute.org

©2011 YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. All rights reserved.

Center for Jewish History, Publisher.

Electronic finding aid was encoded in EAD 2002 by Rachel S. Harrison in December 2011. Description is in English.

Biographical Note

Khaykl Lunski was born on June 29, 1881(?) in Slonim, Russia (now Belarus). His father was a melamed (religious schoolteacher) and was descended from a rabbinical family from Koenigsberg (Krolewiec). From a young age, Lunski received a traditional Jewish education, attending kheyder and then the yeshivas of Slonim and Lida. In 1892 he came to Vilna, where he spent two years as a shammes (beadle) in a small synagogue.

In 1895 Lunski began working for the Strashun Library, the Jewish library run by the Vilna kehilla (community), for which he collected books, rare manuscripts and historical documents. He remained there as a librarian until the liquidation of the library by the Nazis in 1941. In 1918, he assisted S. Ansky in establishing the Jewish Historical Ethnographic Society in Vilna and collected thousands of documents, books, pictures, pinkasim (record books of Jewish communities), and folklore materials for the Society and for its publications. He became secretary of the Jewish Historical Ethnographic Society in 1919 and was also an active member of the Bibliographic Center of the YIVO in Vilna.

Lunski’s literary career began with some Zionist poetry, which he published in Luah Eretz-Yisrael (Calendar of Israel) in 1905. He began his Yiddish literary activities in 1917, publishing an essay in the Vilner Zamlbukh (Vilna Collection). In later years he published essays, articles, books on the history of Vilna Jews during World War I, biographies of rabbis and religious scholars, including the rabbi of Slonim and the Vilna Gaon, a memoir of S. Ansky, a catalogue of the Strashun Library, and several other works. He also collected thousands of books for the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Just prior to the Second World War, Lunski was in the process of writing a history of the Jewish community of Slonim. In all probability, this work was lost during the war.

During the Nazi occupation of Vilna, the Strashun Library and YIVO Library and Archives were liquidated. Lunski and other members of Vilna’s Jewish intelligentsia were forced, along with other Jews from the Vilna Ghetto, to work for the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg, a Nazi unit involved in looting Jewish cultural property in the occupied countries. Lunski was made to sort, pack, and ship thousands of Jewish books and archival materials from the Strashun Library, mainly to the NSDAP Institut zur Erfoschung die Judenfrage in Frankfurt a/Main. He continued writing while in the Vilna Ghetto, writing about the gravestones in the old Jewish cemetery in Vilna and about Jewish publishing in Vilna. He also kept a ghetto diary. These works also appear to have been lost.

The information concerning Lunski’s death is contradictory. Shmerke Kaczerginski claimed that Lunski was deported to Treblinka together with his daughter Khana, while other accounts say that he was beaten to death in September 1942.

References

Abramowicz, Hirsz. Profiles of a Lost World: Memoirs of East European Jewish Life before World War II. Detroit, Michigan: Wayne State University Press, 1999.

Jeshurin, Efim, ed. Vilne: A zamelbukh gevidmet der shtot Vilne. (Vilna: A Collection Dedicated to the City of Vilna). New York: Vilner 367 Brentsh, Arbayter Ring, 1935.

Kruk, Herman. The Last Days of the Jerusalem of Lithuania: Chronicles from the Vilna Ghetto and the Camps, 1939-1944. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2002.

Congress for Jewish Culture, ed. Leksikon fun der nayer yidisher literatur. (Lexicon of the New Jewish Literature). New York: 1963.

Scope and Content Note

The materials in this collection are composed of Khaykl Lunski’s written works, as well as materials he collected for the Strashun Library. These include biographical profiles of rabbinic figures such as the Vilna Gaon, articles on the history of the Jewish community of Slonim, materials pertaining to various religious, social welfare, and educational institutions, administrative notes, minutes, bulletins, salary records, and bibliographic notes of the Strashun Library, correspondence with writers, rabbinical figures, educators, historians, religious institutions in Palestine, personal and family correspondence, and newspaper articles regarding Lunski.

The collection is 1.3 linear feet and dates from 1885-1941, the bulk of which are from 1900-1935. The majority of the materials are in Yiddish and Hebrew, although there are some materials in Russian, Lithuanian, Polish, German, English, and French.

Khaykl Lunski’s papers were presumably mixed with other looted collections from the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg unit. In 1945, these and other Jewish materials from Eastern Europe were placed by the U.S. Army in the Offenbach archival depot, from which they were subsequently redistributed among archives and libraries. The Lunski papers, together with volumes from the Strashun Library, were recovered after the war and brought to YIVO in New York in 1947. They were originally part of the collection arranged as RG 3, Collection of Yiddish Literature and Language, by Ezekiel Lifschutz, ca. 1950, who also created a finding aid in Yiddish. RG 3 is arranged as a reference collection in which documents from various individual collections that refer to Yiddish writers are assembled in folders according to the writer’s name. In 2007-2008 the finding aid for RG 3 was translated into English by Chava Lapin and edited by Rivka Schiller.

Arrangement

The collection was formerly part of Record Group 3, from which it was extracted to form a separate record group, RG 58. The folder arrangement was maintained. RG 3 is a segment of a larger block of the Vilna YIVO records within which all folders are numbered consecutively. Record Group 3 begins at folder 1701 and continues through folder 3402, within which the folders of RG 58 are numbered from 2311 to 2350B. The Lunski materials are arranged in one series.

Restrictions

Access Restrictions

Permission to use the collection must be obtained from the YIVO Archivist.

Use Restrictions

Permission to publish part or parts of the collection must be obtained from the YIVO Archives. For more information, contact:
YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, Center for Jewish History, 15 West 16th Street, New York, NY 10011
email: archives@yivo.cjh.org

Related Material

The Papers of Khaykl Lunski were originally part of RG 3, Yiddish Literature and Language Collection, with which they share a provenance. RG 55, Yiddish Writers and Journalists Union, was also originally part of RG 3, as was RG 57, Papers of Nahum Shtif. The YIVO Archives also has other archival and library materials from the Strashun Library, of which Lunski was the long-time librarian, as well as several books by Lunski.

Separated Material

There is no information about materials that are associated by provenance to the described materials that have been physically separated or removed.

Preferred Citation

Published citations should take the following form:

Identification of item, date (if known); Papers of Khaykl Lunski; RG 58; folder number; YIVO Institute for Jewish Research.

Acquisition Information

Recovered by the YIVO Archives in New York in 1947.

Processing information

Ezekiel Lipschutz compiled and wrote a Yiddish finding aid for RG 3, Collection of Yiddish Literature and Language, ca. 1950. This finding aid was translated from Yiddish by Chava Lapin and edited by Rivka Schiller, 2007-2008 with the assistance of a grant from the Gruss Lipper Family Foundation. The Papers of Khaykl Lunski were extracted from RG 3 to form their own record group, RG 58.

Access Points

• Individuals:

  • Elijah ben Solomon, 1720-1797
  • Lunski, Khaykl
  • Strashun, Mathias, d. 1885

• Organizations:

  • Strashun Library
  • YIVO Archives

• Subjects:

  • Jewish history, life, and culture
  • Jews -- Europe, Eastern
  • Rabbis

• Places:

  • Lithuania
  • Poland
  • Vilnius (Lithuania)

• Document Types:

  • Correspondence
  • Financial records
  • Manuscripts
  • Minutes
  • Newspaper clippings
  • Notes
  • Official documents

Container List