Dina Abramowicz

Who is Dina Abramowicz?

Dina Abramowicz was a librarian at YIVO and a Yiddish language expert.

Abramowicz was born in Vilnius, then under Russian rule. Her parents were teachers. Though her first language was Russian, when the Germans occupied Vilnius during World War I, they allowed Jews to establish their own schools. Abramowicz's parents sent her to a Yiddish-language elementary and high schools. During her university years she studied Polish literature.

Her first job was at a children's library in Vilnius, the Kinderbibliotek. Soon after its founding she joined YIVO.

During World War II, Vilnius's Jews were put in ghettos. A librarian, Herman Kruk, organized a library and asked Abramowicz to staff it. "How can we think of a library under these conditions, and who will come to read books there?" she remembered asking a fellow librarian. "Since there was nothing one could do about this absurd situation, what was the use of talking and wondering?" was the response. During its initial year, the ghetto library lent 100,000 books, mostly of escapist fiction to relieve the suffering of the ghetto residents.

The Vilnius ghetto was liquidated in 1943.