YIVO Branches

YIVO has individual members all over the world. In addition, it has two sister organizations in Chicago and Argentina, which operate as independent institutions.

The Chicago YIVO Society

The Chicago YIVO Society brings Yiddish and Jewish programming to the Chicago area, including free lectures and performances. It publishes a newsletter and provides stipends to young scholars to attend the Uriel Weinreich Program in Yiddish Language, Literature, and Culture, the intensive summer language course co-sponsored by YIVO and Bard College.

Visit: chicagoyivo.org

Fundación IWO

Fundación IWO (est. 1928) was located in the AMIA building, the Jewish cultural center of Argentinean Jewry in Buenos Aires. This building was targeted by a terrorist bomb on July 18, 1994. Nearly 100 people were killed, many of them employees of the Jewish organizations that shared headquarters in the building. Among the organizations devastated by the attack was IWO.

Now, decades later, IWO has resumed its active program of research, publishing, and public programs. Its library and archives—an unparalleled resource for the study of Latin American Jewry—lost many rare items in the bombing, but have been reconstituted in new quarters.

The institution maintains a small exhibition commemorating the bombing. As YIVO's former Chief Librarian Zachary Baker reported in 1996 after a visit:

"Included in the display are Yiddish typewriters that were crushed by the impact of the explosion, a catalog drawer—cards also included—that has been distorted all out of shape, and a clock whose hands are stopped at 10:00. On the floor is a slab of black marble containing a portion of the letter 'A'—for AMIA—salvaged from the building's facade."

—"The Buenos Aires Bombing: Two Years Later," Yedies/YIVO News, No. 183 (Fall 1996).

Visit: iwo.org.ar/iwo