The collection is named for the Yiddish poets Abraham Sutzkever and Szmerke Kaczerginski who were instrumental in saving and hiding the collection, and sending it to YIVO in New York in the late 1940s.

The collection is of mixed provenance and consists of two parts.  The first part of the collection relates to the Vilna Ghetto during Nazi occupation and was generated there.  The second part, which consists of historical and literary manuscripts, had belonged to the YIVO Institute of Vilna before the war.

*Vilna Ghetto*    RG 223 Part I

Materials on the Vilna ghetto reflect daily life and living conditions in the ghetto, social and cultural work, activities of the Judenrat (Jewish Council) and relations with Nazi officials. Maps of the ghetto, 1942.  Diaries, chronicles and manuscripts on the history of the ghetto by Zelig Kalmanovitch, Herman Kruk, Yitschak Rudashevsky, Szmerke Kaczerginski.  Personal identification documents such as badges, armbands, identification cards, passes. Materials on the ghetto administration and its divisions: health, social relief, distribution and supply, statistics, ghetto police, ghetto court, cultural affairs, labor, education.  Materials on various cultural groups.  Issues of the *Geto yedies* (Ghetto News), 1942.  Materials about the partisan groups in and outside the ghetto. Photographs of daily scenes in the ghetto, partisans, destroyed buildings of the YIVO, the Strashun Library, the Vilna Gaon's synagogue.

*Historical and Literary Manuscripts*    RG 223, Part II

Correspondence to or from literary, scholarly and rabbinic personalities:  S. An-Ski, Rabbi Naftali Zvi Yehudah Berlin, Ber Borochov, Rabbi Yechiel Danzig, Simon Dubnow, David Edelstadt, Rabbi Chaim Oyzer Grodzienski, Rabbi Eliyahu Guttmacher, Rabbi David Luria, Abraham Mapu, Mendele Moykher Sforim, Moses Montefiore, Isaac Leib Peretz, David Pinsky, Noah Prylucki, Abraham Reisen, Zalman Reisen, Sholem Aleichem, Nahum Shtif, Mordecai Spector, Rabbi Matisyahu Strashun, Sholem Aleichem.      Manuscripts of:  S. An-Ski, Nathan Birnbaum, Joseph Bovshover, Isaac Meir Dick, Solomon Ettinger, Theodor Herzl, Itzik Manger, Mendele Moykher Sforim, Joseph Perl, Abraham Reisen, Sholem Aleichem, Rabbi Matisyahu Strashun.      *Pinkasim* (registers) of the Vilna Gaon's synagogue, the Jewish community of Skuodas (Yiddish: Shkud) and fragments of the register of the Vilna Kehillah ( 6 pages).      Miscellaneous theater and folklore material.