Mikhail Lev collection

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum 

Mikhail (Michael) Lev was born on July 3, 1917 in the town of Pogrebichshe, Kiev Oblast, Ukraine. His family moved to Krivoy Rog (now Kryvyi Rih, Ukraine) where they joined the newly established Jewish agricultural colony in 1926. In 1935, Lev entered a Jewish teacher’s college in Moscow and started working at the Jewish Central Library of the Jewish publishing house, Der Emes (Truth). In 1941, Mikhail Lev joined the Red Army. He was wounded, captured by the Germans, and survived for a year in a prisoner of war camp before escaping. After his escape, he joined the partisans in Belarus where he served as a commander of the intelligence unit and then as a chief of staff of a partisan brigade. After the war, Lev returned to Moscow and continued his work at Der Emes. He also wrote articles for Eynikayt a newspaper published by the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee. Following the establishment of the monthly Yiddish journal Sovietishe Geymland (Soviet Motherland), Lev became one of its major contributors and a member of its editorial board. Mikhail Lev published 11 books in Yiddish and Russian, as well as articles and essays. In 1996, Lev immigrated to Israel and died there on May 23, 2013. 

Mikhail Lev collection 

boxes oversize folders 7 19 

The Mikhail Lev collection consists of the writings, research materials, and correspondence of the Yiddish language author Mikhail Lev. The collection also includes items from the personal archives of Josef Rabin, Yaakov Shternberg, Moini Shulman, and Aharon Yeyman, as well as the diary of Mendel Rosengauz; literary works by Girsch Dobin (1905-2001), a survivor of the Minsk ghetto; and photocopies of drawings from the Ravensbrück concentration camp. The collection consists of Mikhail Lev’s correspondence with readers, colleagues, friends, Holocaust survivors, other Yiddish writers, publishing houses, and literary journals related to the research and publication of his works. Also included are manuscripts, research materials, and newspaper clippings of Mikhail Lev’s writing related to the Holocaust, the heroism of the Jewish people during World War II, the history of the Sobibór concentration camp, and the Sobibór uprising. The collection also consists of materials relating to Alexsander Pechersky, the leader of the Sobibór uprising, and several other survivors from Sobibór concentration camp. These materials include correspondence, personal documents, and writings, both published and unpublished, relating to the Sobibór concentration camp. Also included are materials relating to Valentin Tomin, a Soviet historian and journalist, who wrote a book about Sobibór published in the Soviet Union in 1964; M. Shulman and letters from Soviet Yiddish writers; Yaakov Shterbnerg (1890 -1973), a Jewish poet; the personal diary of Mendel Rosengauz (1901-1982), a specialist in literature and culture in Yiddish; and the literary work in Yiddish of Girsch Dobin (1905-2001), a survivor of Minsk ghetto. 

The Mikhail Lev collection is arranged in six series. Series 1. Correspondence, 1944-2007 Sub-series A: To/From Mikhail Lev, 1944-2007 Sub-series B: Alexander Pecherski, 1962-2007 Series 2. Manuscripts, 1974-1994, undated Series 3. Research Materials, circa 1940s-1990s, undated Sub-series A: General, circa 1940s-1990s, undated Sub-series B: Materials from the archive of Josef Rabin, 1946-1978 Sub-series C: Materials from the archive of Yaakov Shternberg archive, 1956-1973, undated Sub-series D: Materials from the archive of Moini Shulman, 1968-1981 Sub-series E: Materials from the archive of Aharon Yeyman, 1969-1993, undated Series 4. Printed Materials, 1924-2008 Series 5. Notebooks, undated Series 6. Photographs, circa 1930s-2008