New York, Monday June 29th:
We started our research at The Center for Jewish History in which the voluminous I.N. Steinberg collection is held at YIVO; the Yiddish Institute for Research. The archive doesn't allow us to photograph any material and you can only request black and white photocopies--it is not designed for artists! We'll see if I can push them to digitize this part of the archive.Before coming to New York, I read Steinberg's "Unpromised Land" about his four years in Australia when he single-handedly rallied the entire country/continent to get on board his Jewish Territorialist endeavor. Much of the country including heads of Australian Provinces were supportive of his scheme to turn East Kimberley into a Jewish colony. However, the Federal Govenment refused to change their immigration policy in the end. Now I'm reading his hand written notes and the original manuscript version of this incredible Australian travelogue. Why hasn't a biography been written on this guy? Perhaps because he worked and thought in five languages and the archive reflects this.
Yesterday, I read Steinberg's correspondence with Robert Cosgrove -- the Premier of Tasmania; today I read the Freeland League's periodicals and learned that Steinberg was trying to resurrect the Suriname plan well into the 1950's. I never knew that even after the establishment of the State of Israel the Territorialists wouldn't give up. They were never convinced that Zion was the Promised Land.
What is striking is how much time and effort he spent on the Kimberley Plan while the Tasmania scheme was but a footnote and really the brainchild of Critchley Parker Jr. More on this later.
Here are some of the YIVO people we've encountered so far at The Center for Jewish History:
Fruma Mohrer, Senior Archivist
Lyudmila Sholokhova, Head Librarian and Acting Chief Archivist
Eddy Portnoy, Academic Advisor for the Max Weinreich Center at YIVO and curator of The Jewish Fight Club
