Letter of Abramovič to Nathan Chanin of the Forverts in New York of 7.2.1933 in which he tells that Franz Kurskij safely arrived from Berlin with the archives and library of the Bund. It was yet to be decided what should be done with the archives. It could perhaps be installed in the Bibliotheque Nationale or sent to the comrades of the Bund in Poland. These plans came to nothing, and Kurskij was stranded in Paris with 243 boxes that had to be stored in warehouses. There was not enough money to pay for this, since the economic crisis prevented the comrades in the U.S.A. from contributing sufficiently.
In the end, Kurskij was able to sell part of archives to the IISH in Amsterdam in 1934, this being the first collection which was to arrive in the newly founded Institute. But Kurskij did not sell all of his archive, but kept the part which concerned the Bund itself and its leaders. He only sent to Amsterdam the incoming papers that had been sent to the Bund in Geneva by other socialist parties in Eastern Europe from 1898 onward. This part stayed in Paris and was confiscated by the German authorities after they invaded France in 1940. Kurskij himself would flee to the U.S.A. The Germans had not yet shipped the Bund collection to Germany when France was liberated in 1944, and it was later shipped to New York, where it is now in the archives of the YIVO.
Inventory of Algemeyner Yidisher Arbeyter Bund Collection
