Lrytas.lt

The city of Vilnius in 1925 was an ideal place to establish the YIVO Jewish research institute, Joanathan Brent, director of YIVO which is now located in New York City, said. Later the institute encountered difficulties: the Nazis initially wanted to destroy the collections, so they had to be hidden, and later the material was saved by a Lithuanian librarian from Soviet aggression.

Brent told Lithuanian Radio that all the material saved from the Nazis was to have been destroyed by the Soviets, but that librarian Antanas Ulpis decided to save it instead. He called it an act of bravery. Ulpis and colleagues took the material to the basement of the Palace of Books in Vilnius where it lay from 1948 till 1988. Ulpis died in 1987 never knowing what was to become of the books, Brent said in an interview on Lithuanian state radio.Professor Cecile Kuznitz from Bard College in the US said it was down to actions by average people that the material was collected in the first place, although the history of the institute is graced by famous people such as Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud. …

full article in Lithuanian here:http://kultura.lrytas.lt/istorija/zydu-istorijos-medziaga-nuo-sovietu-isgelbejo-lietuvis.htm