Jewish Canadian Studies: Primary sources

Digital Yiddish library of more than 11,000 titles, including contemporary oral histories, lectures, Yiddish audiobooks, and more.

The IISH has a unique and manifold collection of Yiddish material consisting of books, brochures, periodicals and pamphlets.

The YIVO Archives and Library represent the single largest and most comprehensive collection of materials on East European Jewish civilization in the world.

This site brings together the databases and digitized archival material of the Alex Dworkin Canadian Jewish Archives (formerly CJCCCNA), the Jewish Public Library Archives of Montreal (JPL-A), the Montreal Holocaust Museum, the Ottawa Jewish Archives, the Saint John Jewish Historical Museum (SJJHM), the Congregation Shaar Hashomayim Museum and Archives and The Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue Archives. New material is being added on a regular basis.

The Alex Dworkin Canadian Jewish Archives collects and preserves documentation on all aspects of the Jewish presence in Quebec and Canada. Most of the catalogue descriptions of our holdings can be consulted online, through the database of the Canadian Jewish Heritage Network (www.cjhn.ca).

The Ottawa Jewish Archives is dedicated to the objectives of gathering, recording and preserving the collective memory of the Jewish community of Ottawa.

Refugee Boulevard: Making Montreal Home after the Holocaust is a multimedia project that captures the initial experiences of child survivors who settled in the St. Urbain Ghetto, a neighbourhood known today as the Mile End or the Plateau. A historical audio tour as well as online videos detail what it was like for these children to arrive to a new country alone or with surviving family members, build relationships, deal with adversity and discrimination, search for joy, and simply move on.

The oral history collection consists of 200 audio clips, including oral histories of members of the western Canadian Jewish community, such as rabbis, businesspeople, professionals, politicians, and Holocaust survivors. These interviews were recorded between 1968 and 2011. The collection also features recorded lectures on topics that have been presented by the Centre over the years, including the garment industry, farm colonies, and the YMHA, among others.

The Yiddish Book Center is a nonprofit organization working to recover, celebrate, and regenerate Yiddish and modern Jewish literature and culture.

Placards from the two leading centers of Yiddish theater in their respective heydays: New York, 1890s-1910s (64 images), and Buenos Aires, 1930s-1940s (28 images)

The site includes full-text access to the Society's Newsletter (in Adobe Acrobat format) and to the contents pages of the Saul Bellow Journal from 1981 onwards.

After the war, a group of young Jewish orphans immigrated to Canada as part of the War Orphans Project. Using their own words and artifacts, this virtual exhibit tells the story of the orphans' courage and resilience.