YIVO, THE Jewish Scientific Institute in Vilna (Yiddish: Yidisher Visnshaftlekher
Institut, YIVO), academic institution established in 1925. It carried out sociological,
historical, and philological research on the Jewish community in Europe as well as
collected documents and artefacts. The YIVO Library had a collection of more than
one hundred thousand volumes and as many manuscripts. In 1940 the central office
of the Institute was moved to New York. Most of the YIVO collection, taken away by
the Germans, was found after the war.
ZIONISM—ideology of the Jewish national revival, advocating establishment of
a Jewish state in Palestine, championed most memorably by Theodor Herzl in the
late nineteenth century.
ŻSS (Jewish Self Help, Polish: Żydowska Samopomoc Społeczna; German: Jüdische
Soziale Selbsthilfe), an organisation set up in Kraków in May 1940 by the German
administration to coordinate aid for Jews in the General Government. It was dissolved
in July 1942 and re-established in October 1942 as JUS (Jüdische Unterstutzungstelle für
das Generalgouvernement), an organisation considered by the Jewish underground to
be an attempt by the SS to take charge of relief supplies intended for the Jews, as well
as to conceal the mass murder of Jews in Poland.
ŻYDOWSKA SAMOPOMOC SPOŁECZNA-KOMISJA KOORDYNACYJNA (Jewish Self Help.
Coordinating Committee), social aid organisation set up in Warsaw in September 1939,
grouping Jewish aid organisations such as TOZ or Centos. Dismantled on 30 October
1940.
ŻTOS (ALSO “Żytos”) (Jewish Social Welfare Association, from October 1940) and
ŻOS (Jewish Social Welfare, from November 1941), also commonly referred to as ŻSS
(Jewish Self Help), though separate from the ŻSS in Kraków—an organisation developed
from the Coordinating Commission for Jewish Social Welfare Institutions in the
Warsaw ghetto. Under the guise of such social self-help, many underground organisations
operated in the ghetto.
ZLOTY, ZLOTYS—Polish currency.
