YIVO Mourns the Passing of Dr. Iryna Serheyeva

The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research mourns the untimely death of our dear colleague, Dr. Iryna Serheyeva, the Head of Judaica Department of the Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine. The Vernadsky National Library is one of the largest repositories of Jewish archival materials, books, and periodicals in Eastern Europe, where she has worked since 1986. She was 61.

Iryna belonged to the generation of young scholars and archivists in Ukraine whose professional development coincided with the opening of the rich Jewish collections in the late 1980s-early 1990s. These materials were restricted from access for dozens of years. She stood at the beginning of the thriving and exciting Jewish scholarship revival in the former Soviet Union and played an important part in this revival.

Iryna was instrumental in establishing and maintaining professional relationships with the YIVO Institute since the early 1990s and generously shared her knowledge and expertise with her colleagues. Most recently, in May 2019, she and her colleagues in Kiev hosted a YIVO delegation at the Vernadsky Library and led a tour presenting the An-ski archive and rare Yiddish publications. Iryna also graduated from YIVO’s Yiddish summer program.

Iryna was a beautiful, radiant human being, a talented scholar, and a prolific author. She will be terribly missed. Borukh dayan emes!