In the 1940s, Jewish scholars at YIVO in New York planned a museum called "Muzey fun di alte heyman" focusing on the Jews of Eastern Europe, as they realized their world was disappearing due to World War II.

In the 1940s, amid World War II, the Yiddish Scientific Institute (YIVO) in New York planned a Museum of the Homes of the Past to depict prewar Jewish life in Eastern Europe, but the project was eventually abandoned.