YIVO Mounts New Exhibition

Runaway Husbands, Desperate Families: The Story of the National Desertion Bureau

(New York, NY) – The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research (YIVO) is pleased to announce a new on-site exhibition, Runaway Husbands, Desperate Families: The Story of the National Desertion Bureau.

The exhibition opens to the public on Monday, June 17, 2024, with an opening event at 7:00pm ET at YIVO located in the Center for Jewish History building (15 West 16th Street, New York, New York). It will be on view through the fall.

Popular stereotypes about Jewish husbands are usually positive: they’re loyal, they’re good providers, they don’t drink to excess, and they aren’t violent. It’s no wonder most people have never heard of the National Desertion Bureau, an agency created in New York in 1911 to track down runaway Jewish husbands and bring them to justice. It turns out that the era of Jewish mass migration from Eastern Europe to North America, was accompanied by terrible cultural and social upheaval, poverty, and failure. One sad feature of this era was the phenomenon of broken families, which occurred on a mass scale.

The problem of Jewish men abandoning their families was so severe that along with the National Desertion Bureau, Yiddish newspapers like the Forverts, with a daily readership in the hundreds of thousands, published a popular column called “The Gallery of Missing Husbands,” which featured mug shots and descriptions of men who had left their wives and families in the lurch. There were even local psychics on the Lower East Side who specialized in tracking down missing husbands.

Addressing a true social epidemic in the Jewish community, the National Desertion Bureau worked with a multiplicity of governmental and private organizations to find these men and force them to pay alimony, child support, and serve jail time if they didn’t. From 1905 through the 1960s, the Bureau tracked more than 18,000 cases. Its files are rich in detail and are often short novellas unto themselves, with details on the tragedy of marital dissolution, abandoned children, and financial ruin.

Together with The Jewish Board, YIVO is pleased to present a new exhibition, Runaway Husbands, Desperate Families: The Story of the National Desertion Bureau, which traces the history of the National Desertion Bureau and includes never-before-seen records, documents, and photographs from the organization’s voluminous archives.

At the opening, YIVO Senior Academic Advisor & Director of Exhibitions, Eddy Portnoy will lead a panel discussion featuring Professor Annette Igra
(Carleton College) and Dr. Annie Polland (President of the Tenement Museum). Learn more about the exhibition at: https://yivo.org/National-Desertion-Bureau.

OPENING RECEPTION

What:            Runaway Husbands, Desperate Families: The Story of the National Desertion Bureau Exhibition Opening
When:           Monday, June 17, 2024 | 7:00pm ET
Where:          Taking place live on Zoom and in person at YIVO Located in the Center for Jewish History (15 West 16th Street, New York, NY 10011)
Cost:              Free
Reservations Available at:  yivo.org/ndb-opening

Exhibition co-presented by YIVO and The Jewish Board. Exhibition opening co-sponsored by the Tenement Museum.

For more information contact:
Shelly Freeman
Chief of Staff

YIVO

The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research is dedicated to the preservation and study of the history and culture of East European Jewry worldwide. For nearly a century, YIVO has pioneered new forms of Jewish scholarship, research, education, and cultural expression. Our public programs and exhibitions, as well as online and on-site courses, extend our outreach to a global community. The YIVO Archives contains 24 million unique items and YIVO’s Library has over 400,000 volumes—the single largest resource for the study of East European Jewish life in the world. yivo.org / yivo.org/the-whole-story