Special Collections: Belarusian

Created by U.S. Presidential directive during World War II and at first placed under the Federal Communications Commission in 1941, the Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) was later transferred to the War Department, and then to the Central Intelligence Agency in 1947.

The original mission of FBIS was to monitor, record, transcribe and translate intercepted radio broadcasts from foreign governments, official news services, and clandestine broadcasts from occupied territories. These translations, or transcriptions in the case of English language materials, make up the Daily Reports.

The FBIS Daily Reports collection is divided into two chronological segments: 1941-1974 and 1974-1996. FBIS Daily Reports, 1941-1974, consists of a single Daily Report publication. FBIS Daily Reports, 1974-1996, is comprised of eight separate regional Daily Reports, of which Part 6 pertains to Eastern Europe (EEU), and Part 7 to the Soviet Union and Central Eurasia (SOV). Regional coverage for eastern Europe and the Soviet Union is also included for the years 1968 to 1974.

The reports includes news, interviews, speeches, editorial commentary, and other materials.

Charles Pachter, born in Toronto, is one of Canada's leading contemporary artists.

His papers include his mother's, Sara Pachter's, travel diary to Israel and Russia in 1959, as well as correspondence and photographs of her trip to Belarus and Russia in 2002. Sara Pachter was a Toronto travel agent and led frequent tours of Israel.

A collection of books and periodicals (ca. 200 items)  published by Belarusian refugees living in displaced persons’ camps in West Germany after the Second World War.

A digitized, fully searchable and hyperlinked repository of visual testimonies by almost 52,000 survivors of genocidal wars. The vast majority of the testimonies in the USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive are from Jewish survivors of the Holocaust (1939-1945), as well as other Holocaust witnesses, rescuers, and aid providers.

Among the main subjects discussed in the interviews are geographical locations, prominent figures, names of family members and other people, prewar Jewish life, religious practice, cultural life, acts of persecution and prejudice, camps and ghettos, deportations, massacres, means of adaptation or survival, resistance, rescue and aid efforts, and postwar emigration and immigration.

The collection includes a variety of material concerning agrarian development and the peasantry of 19th century Russia. The main bulk of the publications of the Zemstvo, provincial administrative bodies set up after the Reform of 1861, consists of more than 4000 volumes covering the period from 1860 to 1917. The material in the collection is important not only for historians of Russia but also for economists and others concerned with the agrarian economy and the doctrinal debate of the Marxists and Russian Populists.