Guide to the Sarah Fell-Yellin papers, 1910-1981

(bulk 1920-1968)

Brown University Library, Special Collections
Box A, John Hay Library
Brown University
Providence, RI 02912
Tel: 401-863-2146
E-mail: hay@brown.edu

Published in 2009

Collection Overview

Title:	Sarah Fell-Yellin papers
Date range:	1910-1981, (bulk 1920-1968)
Creator:	Fell-Yellin, Sarah, 1895-1968
Extent:	3.5 linear feet (3 record centered boxes and 1 oversize box)
Abstract:	The collection includes material on and by both Sarah Fell-Yellin and her husband Mendel. There are newspaper clippings, many of which deal with labor issues, literary manuscripts, correspondence and memorabilia. There are also family documents such as membership cards, photographs, a death certificate, and a marriage license.
Language of materials:	English
Repository:	Brown University Library, Special Collections
Collection number:	Ms. 2008.030

Scope & content

The Sarah Fell Yellin papers is a small but rich collection of correspondence, family documents, photographs, memorabilia, notebooks, scrapbooks and literary manuscripts amassed by Sarah Fell and Mendel Yellin. The earliest documents they brought with them from Poland, but the bulk of the collection starting with Mendel Yellin's green card and Sarah Fell Yellin's poems and speeches reflects their experiences in Boston, New York, Los Angeles and Dallas.

The correspondence series includes letters in Yiddish, in English and a few in Russian. Some are business related; most are personal. The earliest dated letters are from 1932 and the latest from 1983. There is a collection of letters dated 1938-1939 from correspondents in Bialystok. The Yellins kept this batch of letters together in a marked envelope which lacked address, stamp and postmark.

The family documents consist of Mendel Yellin's diplomas, Mendel and Sarah Fell Yellin's delousing cards, their American citizenship certificates, their marriage certificate, their immigration cards, Mendel Yellin's green card, and a copy of Sarah Fell Yellin's death certificate. There is also a sheaf of membership cards for organizations like The Biro-Bidjan Institute and Mendel Yellin's delegate pass to the first Convention of International Workers' Order. Some of the documents had been previously photocopied and these copies have been retained and filed with the originals.

The photographs series contains some snap shots of Hyman Yellin and Mendel Yellin, a few of Mendel Yellin with Sarah Fell Yellin, some of groups like the Los Angeles Jewish Writers Circle taken in 1955, and one of the National Unity Convention of the Jewish Peoples' Committee taken in 1931. There is a large section of formal portraits of Sarah Fell Yellin as well as several plates which were used as jacket illustrations for Sarah Fell Yellin's books. There are also some photographs of unknown individuals and some unknown groups. The groups appear to be members of a school or club probably date from the early 20th century. Some of the photographs are only photocopies. No indication is given of the whereabouts of the originals. Some of the most informal photographs are in the scrapbooks : a photograph of a young Sarah Fell Yellin in a sailor dress and a candid of Mendel and Sarah Fell Yellin with their two sons taken no later than 1928 are particularly noteworthy.

The memorabilia series includes letterheads from committees or firms that various members of the family belonged to, a political cartoon, a memorial album for Michael Gold and one for Moissaye Joseph Olgin. There are also birthday party invitations for several parties for Sarah Fell Yellin which doubled as fund raisers to publish her books. A large folder of flyers, tickets and posters for many of Sarah Fell Yellin's speeches is useful for tracing her activist career. There are get well wishes for Sarah Fell Yellin as well as condolences to Mendel Yellin and memorial notices on her death. There is a blurb for one of Sarah Fell Yellin's books written by her older son, Hyman Yellin. A program for a banquet honoring Chaim Suler in 1972 which was organized by Mendel Yellin , pamphlets from the Warsaw Ghetto Memorial, a poster from the Yivo Institute, as well as a program for a French/Yiddish marionette show. A cassette tape made of the funeral service for Sarah Fell Yellin which is mentioned in one of Victor Yellin's letters to his father is also included. Poems and articles on Sarah Fell Yellin are in this series. One is hand drawn and, judging by the street names, represents a small portion of an American city. The other is a commercial, full color folded map of the Near East.

The literary manuscripts series contains both published and draft items and represents the work of both Sarah Fell and Mendel Yellin. There are short stories, newspaper columns, poems, speeches and at least one play. Some of the drafts are typed but most are handwritten and difficult to read. No attempt has been made to credit either of the Yellins as the author of particular manuscripts. Though one published poem is clearly attributed to Mendel Yellin, the bulk of his work is newspaper columns. His topics range from Yad Vashem to Boston, from anti-war protests in Washington, D.C. to the Tall Ships Festival in Newport, R.I. The bulk of Sarah Fell Yellin's work is her poetry which usually has a political connection. She wrote, for example, several poems on the Rosenberg children, one on the first flight of Yuri Gagarin.

Sarah Fell Yellin's poetry inspired several pieces of music. There is a score for "My words" which contains a translation into English from the original Yiddish and music by Waldemar Hille and one entitled "Chaversche Freid" with music by Nathan H. Alterman. There is also a piece called Deine Oign with words by Dora Teitelbaum and music by V. Martin Fin. In the memorabilia series, there is a choral program which features a piece with words by Sarah Fell Yellin.

The notebooks are an interesting conglomeration of small spiral commercial notebooks, and odd sheets of paper sewn together into note pad form. Most of the entries are in Yiddish but the more recent notebooks contain entries in English as well. There are quotations, bibliographical references and drafts of poems. The books all open on the right and are meant to be read from right to left even when the entries are in English. There are undated notebooks. The dated books come from 1944, through the 1950's and into the 1960's.

There are a number of scrapbooks in the collection. These are full of clippings, mostly in Yiddish, and some photographs. Mendel Yellin's scrapbook contains copies of many of his columns and was also haphazardly stuffed with letters, birthday cards, membership cards and photographs all of which have been removed to separate folders. While there is one elegant leather bound album which Mendel Yellin started after Sarah Fell Yellin's death which contains memorial notices, condolences and long obituaries, most of the scrapbooks are as eclectic in format as the notebooks. In one case, a child's drawing pad has been used. In another case, a proof copy of Man and His Time is used to hold clippings and drafts of poems. Mendel used the proof of the cover for Songs of Days and Years, the posthumously published translation of some of Sarah Fell Yellin's poetry as a scrapbook holding reviews and thank you notes for the gifts of copies of the book he had shared with family, friends and institutions. The series starts in 1923 and ranges through the 1920's. It then skips to the 1960's. Also housed here is a 25th anniversary memorial album on the Morning Freiheit which appears to have been assembled by the Yellins rather than issued by the paper.

The Yellins cut out and saved all manner of articles from newspapers and magazines. There are articles about Dalton Trumbo, Lillian Hellman, Martin Buber, Langston Hughes, oil pipelines, and Seattle, Washington. There are reviews of the first Broadway run of Equus and a book on the medical consequences of a broken heart as well as the Holocaust television series and thoughts about Fiddler on the Roof. There is a short run of issues of The Morning Freiheit and many clippings from Yiddish newspapers. These last are grouped by decade where dated or, if not, in an undated folder.

Access Points

Subject Names

• Fell-Yellin, Sarah, 1895-1968
• Yellin, Mendel
• Yellin, Victor Fell

Subject Names

• Fell-Yellin, Sarah, 1895-1968
• Yellin, Mendel
• Yellin, Victor Fell

Subject Topics

• Language and Literature

• Morgn-frayhayt

Document Types

• Correspondence
• Poetry
• Short stories
• Legal documents

Occupations

• Writers
• Activists

Arrangement

The collection is arranged into 8 series.

• Series 1. Correspondence.
• Series 2. Family documents.
• Series 3. Photographs.
• Series 4. Memorabilia.
• Series 5. Literary manuscripts.
• Series 6. Music.
• Series 7. Notebooks.
• Series 8. Scrapbooks.
• Series 9. Clippings.

Biographical note

To put the Sarah Fell-Yellin papers in their historical context, a sketch of the history of Poland in general, and Bialystok in particular in helpful. A very brief look at the role Jewish immigrants played in the history of the early 20th century in the United States is also necessary.. Both of the Yellins came from Poland which has a long history of conquest, division and revolution. Before World War II, it also had the largest Jewish community in Europe and a still vigorous though fading tradition of religious toleration. In 1795, it was divided among its powerful neighbors : The Russian Empire, Hapsburg Austria and the Kingdom of Prussia. Poles were drafted into three armies in World War I and fought against each other, sustaining over a million casualties. As part of the Treaty of Versailles, Poland regained its independence which it kept until the eve of World War II.

Bialystok is the largest city in northeast Poland and the second largest in the country. When the tripartite division of the country took place in 1795, Bialystok became part of Prussia, but in 1807 it became part of the Russian Empire. It developed into a major textile manufacturing center during the 19th century and, as it did so, its population grew to approximately 66,000 with more than half of them Jews. During World War II, the town was bombed and passed back and forth between Belorussian and Lithuanian control. When an independent Poland was proclaimed, Bialystok became Polish, but in 1920 the city was overrun by the Soviet army during the Polish-Soviet War. It was at this critical moment that the Yellins left Europe.

When the Yellins came to the United States, they joined a steady flow of Jews who had been immigrating since the early 19th century. By the 1870's the influx of Sephardic and German Jews was replaced by Eastern European Jews as the tradition of religious tolerance in that area waned. By 1924, approximately two million Jews had arrived in the United States, among them the Yellins. These Eastern Europeans brought their experience in industry with them and quickly took up the causes of workers' rights, civil rights, women's rights, freedom of and freedom from religion and the peace movement. All of these were colored by the socialism and communism they had espoused in Europe.

The Forwerts and The Morning Freiheit were the two newspapers most read by these communities. The Yellins worked for The Morning Freiheit or as it was also known, Der Morgen Freiheit, a Yiddish/English newspaper with both daily and weekly editions. Founded in 1922 by Moissaye Joseph Olgin, it continued publication until 1988, gradually moving from its affiliation with the Communist Party of the United States to a more socialist outlook.

Sarah Fell Yellin.

Garment worker, teacher, lecturer and poet, Sarah Fell Yellin was born in 1985 in Krynki, Poland, an area known both for its industry and its labor movements. Her uncle was a professional activist and escaped the czar's police by fleeing to New York. Her parents, a tin smith and a cigarette maker, were both members of an organized worker movement and her mother was literate in Yiddish. Sarah was sent to a private gymnasia, or high school, in Grodne where the factory owners also sent their daughters. She graduated with honors in 1912.

She returned home and taught Russian to the brothers and sisters of the workers' movement. As the refugees poured into Poland during World War I, she began to teach Yiddish to the uprooted children. As German soldiers moved in to occupy the area, the teachers were asked to teach exclusively in German. Sarah Fell refused and, warned by another teacher, managed to escape to Bialystok. Again she taught Yiddish in a school for refugees and again the German occupying armies moved in and demanded that all schooling be done in German, but this time her compromise offer of using both German and Yiddish was accepted and she stayed. The Germans were eventually replaced by Bolsheviks and Sarah Fell taught for a while in a Bolshevik school. Forced by counterrevolutionaries to retreat quickly, the Russian soldiers withdrew leaving civilian sympathizers stranded. In this emergency, Sarah Fell received money and papers from her uncle to allow her to immigrate to the United States. Once Field Marshall Pilsudski's forces were poised to take Bialystok, she and her soon to be husband, Mendel Yellin, escaped on foot to Lithuania, obtaining papers in Kaunas, Lithuania which allowed them to continue a circuitous path across Europe to Danzig, Berlin and eventually to sail November 8, 1920 third class from Liverpool to Quebec on the Victorian.

Sarah Fell and Mendel Yellin were met by Mendel Yellin's brother, Samuel, and cousin from Boston on November 20th. From there, they went on to permanent residence in Boston where they were married by Rabbi David N. Rabinowitz on Dec. 28, 1920. While Mendel Yellin is listed as having a profession, she is listed as being "at home". She became a citizen in 1938 and remained in Boston for some thirty years writing for the Morning Freiheit, organizing protests against injustices like the sales tax and the increased cost of gas and and bread, giving speeches, writing poetry and raising two sons, Hyman and Victor Fell Yellin.

The family moved to New York City where in 1957, Sarah Yellin became a garment worker, her proudest achievement, as it linked her intellectual concerns with her actual occupation. Sarah and Mendel Yellin moved on to Los Angeles, probably when Sarah Yellin retired, where they became involved in the rich musical and literary life of the Jewish community of the area.

Sarah Yellin said that she loved writing for children. Since they were the foundation of the future, she thought that stories and poems for them had to be of the highest quality. She was proud of her family which she considered a "fine intellectual unit". Her writing was not a hobby for her, but a "very serious desire to communicate ideas, emotions and experiences for the good of humanity". She died suddenly on a visit to New York in June of 1968, was cremated and is buried in Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn.

Sarah Yellin's name is given in many forms in the collection. Her first name is rendered Sarah, Sara, Sora, and Sary. Her maiden name is given as Fel or Fell.

Mendel Yellin

Born in 1894 in Bialystok, Poland, a crossroads of German, Russian, Lithuanian and Polish culture, Mendel Yellin received a diploma, written in Russian, in June 1910 from the Belostotsky Jewish Vocational School. He also received a certificate, also in Russian, in 1910 indicating that he passed his accountant examination with high marks. Various documents within the collection indicate that Mendel Yellin held a variety of jobs: superintendent of a Jewish vocational school in the Bialystok area, a commercant which can be translated as dealer or merchant, bank clerk, and salesman. He was also a labor activist and a newspaper columnist.

His 1937 membership card for the Biro-Bidjan Institute, the tickets for the 25th and 26th anniversary celebrations of the founding of the Soviet Union in 1942 and 1943, his delegate card for the 1st convention of the International Workers Order in 1931, his 1943 delegate card for the 10th anniversary celebration of the Congress of American-Soviet Friendship and the share of stock in ICOR which supported Jewish colonization in the Soviet Union show the range of his activities. The stock certificates for shares of the United Workers Association of Massachusetts and his 1947 award for service to the Yiddish paper, The Morning Freiheit and his many news columns fill out the picture. He became a citizen of the United States in 1933. He died in 1985 in Dallas where he had moved to be with his son, Hyman Yellin, after his wife's death. The collection includes many articles by Mendel Yellin as well as a vivid account of his and his wife's escape on foot from Bialystok which ended in their arrival in Quebec where he had his first taste of grapefruit.

Mendel Yellin's name appears in the collection in many different ways. His first name is variously rendered as Mendel, Mendl, Mendil, Mendeles, Manuel or Menachem. His last name is given as Ellin, Elin, and Jelen as well as Yellin.

Hyman Yellin

The older of the Yellin's two sons, Hyman or Haim Yellin, was born in Boston in June of 1921. By the time of the 2nd Annual Bialystok Ball in December of 1947, the guest list in the printed program for the gala reveals that he had married and had two daughters : Jacqualine Ann and Donna Jane. At some point, a third daughter was born and there are letters from Maria to her grandfather Mendel Yellin. The family lived in Dallas, Texas where Hyman Yellin worked as an engineer for various oil companies. His area of expertise was oil pipelines and his name appears on the letterhead of the International Pipeline Association of Dallas. The collection also contains an article by him on Costa Rican pipelines. Hyman Yellin died in 1988.

Born in Boston in 1924, Victor Fell Yellin joined the faculty of New York University in 1961 as a professor of music. He had previously taught at Ohio State University and Williams College. He was a composer, a teacher, a musicologist, an author, an arranger and a conductor. After fighting in World War II, he graduated from Harvard University in 1949 where he studied with Walter Piston. His AM followed in 1952 and his PhD in 1957. He lived for some time in Paris where he studied with Darius Milhaud and spent at least one summer at the McDowell Colony in New Hampshire. Excerpts from Victor Yellin's opera Abaylar have been performed by the Metropolitan Opera Studio in New York. As a music historian, he wrote on many aspects of music both American in which he had a particular interest and the Romantic period of European music. His most widely acclaimed books are The Omnibus Idea and the definitive biography of George Whitefield Chadwick entitled Chadwick, Yankee Compose. He reconstructed two early American operas and conducted little known works by Amy Beach. He and his wife Isabel had one son, David Garo Yellin who is frequently referred to in Victor Yellin's letters to his father, Mendel Yellin. Victor Yellin died in 2005.

David Garo Yellin, or Garo Yellin as he is known professionally, is a free lance cellist based in the New York City area. He was born in 1962 and attended both New York University and Julliard in a joint degree program. He performs classical, popular and rock music in the recording studio, on Broadway, in concert and on international tours.

Access & Use

Access to the collection:	There are no restrictions on access, except that the collection can only be seen by prior appointment. Some materials may be stored off-site and cannot be produced on the same day on which they are requested.
Use of the materials:	Researchers are advised that express written permission to reproduce, quote, or otherwise publish any portion or extract from this collection must be obtained from the Brown University Library. Although Brown University has physical ownership of the collection and the materials contained therein, it does not claim literary rights. It is up to the researcher to determine the owners of the literary rights and to obtain any necessary permissions from them.
Preferred citation:	Sarah Fell Yellin papers, Ms. 2008.030, Brown University Library.
Contact information:	Brown University Library, Special Collections Box A, John Hay Library Brown University Providence, RI 02912 Tel: 401-863-2146 E-mail: hay@brown.edu

Administrative Information

ABOUT THE COLLECTION
Acquisition:	The collection was given as a gift by Victor and Hyman Yellin in August 1987.
ABOUT THE FINDING AID
Author:	Finding aid prepared by Lindsay Woodel.
Encoding:	Finding aid encoded by Tatyana Badalyan 2009 July 14
Descriptive rules:	Finding aid based on Describing Archives: A Content Standard (DACS)

Additional Information

Other information:

Brown University Library catalog record for this collection: Sarah Fell-Yellin papers

Inventory

---