been destroyed by bombing, and the largest cache in the Vilna Ghetto had been discovered by the German forces shortly before their retreat and burnt. Many other repositories survived, and locals who had been given works to hide by Jewish residents quickly arrived to return them. Early discoveries included the handwritten diaries of Theodor Herzl, a sculpture of David by Mark Antokolsky, and letters by Sholem Aleichem, I. L. Peretz and many others. Their work proceeded rapidly, and with much enthusiasm from the surviving Jewish communities of Eastern Europe. Sutzkever's return to Russia in 1944, followed by Kovner's move to Palestine, left Kaczerginski in charge of the museum and recovery project. Although the Museum was theoretically supported by Lithuanian and Soviet authorities, they provided few resources, assigning the organisers no budget and only giving them a burnt out former Ghetto building as a headquarters. Following the end of the war in 1945, it became clear that the volunteers' work was incompatible with the priorities of Soviet authorities, who burnt 30 tons of YIVO materials and, having demanded that any publicly displayed books be reviewed by a censor, simply refused to return any submitted works. Accordingly, Kaczerginski and the others prepared to smuggle the collection yet again—this time to the United States, where YIVO had established a new headquarters. Volunteers took the books across the border to Poland, enlisting the help of Bricha contacts to move them into non-Soviet Europe. From there much of the material went to New York; Sutzkever held on to some of it, which was later given to the National Library of Israel. The Museum was finally shut down by the KGB in 1949; some of the remaining material was destroyed, while the remainder was moved to the Lithuanian Central State Archives, the Vilna Gaon Jewish State Museum, and the Lithuanian National Library. Following the end of the Soviet Union, YIVO successfully negotiated with the Lithuanian government to produce copies of approximately 100,000 pages of this material. A further archive, containing 150,000 documents, was discovered in 1991 having been hidden in a church by Antanas Ulpis. In total, it is estimated the Brigade saved 30–40 percent of the YIVO archives. Additional works – those confiscated, rather than hidden by the Brigade – were discovered in 1954 in the building of a former bank in Vienna, and returned to YIVO. See also Jewish literature David Fishman References Bibliography