Appeal for materials and memories

New project seeks to create digital archive celebrating

The legendary Yiddish poet A.N. Stencl

Appeal for materials and memories

A new digital archive project to preserve the legacy of one of London’s foremost but now largely forgotten Yiddish poets has been launched. Funded by Arcadia and led by Dr Rachel Lichtenstein of Manchester Metropolitan University, the project team are calling on anyone who has memories of this poet, or other related archive material such as photographs, recordings, or letters to get in touch stenclarchive@outlook.com.

This international archive project will track down and digitise previously undocumented material relating to Stencl’s life, work, and Yiddish activities, from both private and public collections, in the U.K., and across the globe, then create a bi-lingual (Yiddish and English) multi-media website that both shares and safeguards this story for future generations.

High resolution copies of everything collected will also be deposited with the Center for Jewish History in New York and become part of the permanent online collections of their partner organisation the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, which will be accessible to researchers via their online digital holdings discoverable at search.cjh.org.

Dr Lichtenstein said: “Whilst considerable efforts have been made to preserve, and to digitise some of Stencl’s printed and handwritten material, which was mainly gathered from his East London flat after his death, there remains a less tangible but no less important yet to be collected archive. This is scattered around the world and includes ephemera, film footage, letters, manuscripts, as well as rare articles and publications particularly from his Berlin period. These are also the final years to be able to gather the living memory of the last of Stencl’s cultural circle in London before this testimony before it is lost to time.”

This project has developed out of decades of research by Dr Lichtenstein, elements of which have featured at Jewish Book Week 2024 on BBC Radio 3 in the radio documentary The Last Poet of Whitechapel and at events at Manchester’s Jewish Museum The Friends of Yiddish, Manchester Poetry Library 2022 and with the collective Yiddish Berlin 2023. A British Academy Leverhulme grant has enabled Lichtenstein to translate and explore material from Stencl’s Yiddish magazine Loshn un lebn (project website launching in 2025). A major new nonfiction book by Lichtenstein (published by William Collins) that explores Yiddish culture past and present via Stencl’s story will launch in Autumn 2026 at the same time as this Arcadia digital archive project.

Avram Nachum Stencl (1897-1983) also known as A.N. Stencl, was a Yiddish poet whose extraordinary life spanned the height and demise of contemporary Yiddish culture. Born into a Hasidic community in Russian occupied Poland, Stencl fled after receiving his military call up papers then wandered across Europe writing poetry before he entered Berlin as a stateless refugee in 1921. He lived a bohemian lifestyle there and published extensively. After narrowly escaping the Gestapo in 1936, he settled in London’s East End, established a vibrant Yiddish literary society ‘The Friends of Yiddish’ and published a Yiddish journal Loshn un lebn (Language & Life). Despite these remarkable achievements his story today is practically unknown and is now on the verge of slipping out of living memory.

Arcadia is a charitable foundation that works to protect nature, preserve cultural heritage and promote open access to knowledge. Since 2002 Arcadia has awarded more than $1.2 billion to organizations around the world.

Manchester Metropolitan University celebrates its 200th anniversary this year. Located in the heart of central Manchester the university has over 40,000 students and over 4,000 members of staff and four faculties including Arts & Humanities, where the Writing School is based. For more information visit: www.mmu.ac.uk

Center for Jewish History in New York City illuminates history, culture, and heritage. The Center provides a collaborative home for five partner organizations: American Jewish Historical Society, American Sephardi Federation, Leo Baeck Institute, Yeshiva University Museum, and YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. https://www.cjh.org/

YIVO Institute of Jewish Research is a research institute, an institution of higher learning, an adult education organization, a cultural organization, and a world-renowned library and archive that holds the largest collection of Yiddish material from Eastern Europe in the world. https://yivo.org/Home

Dr Rachel Lichtenstein is a British artist, writer, and curator who is internationally known for her books, multi-media projects and artworks that examine place, memory and Jewish identity. She currently combines writing and research with a post as Reader in the English departments of Manchester Metropolitan University where she also co-directs the Centre for Place Writing. https://rachellichtenstein.com/

Project team includes Dr Paul Darby, Yiddish translator Lena Watson, and an international group of archivists, historians, Yiddish experts and translators who are collectively searching for the remnants of Stencl’s life and work in archives and private collections around the world. To get in touch email stenclarchive@outlook.com.