Researchers Tackle Yiddish Writer's Papers.

Officials of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research combed through the cluttered Bronx apartment (above) of Chaim Grade, the esteemed Yiddish writer, on Tuesday to determine how to move his manuscripts and other papers to the institute's headquarters for examination by five scholarly groups. Mr. Grade's widow, Inna Hecker Grade, died in May without a clear will or immediate survivors, throwing into question the disposition of the valuable papers of her husband, who died in 1982. The apartment was taken over by the Bronx public administrator's office, which has invited five institutions to examine the papers, including YIVO. But according to Jay Ziffer, a lawyer for the public administrator, the apartment, just south of Van Cortlandt Park, lacked air-conditioning and was so dusty that the office decided to have them shipped to YIVO headquarters on West 16th Street in Manhattan, where the five institutions can perform a painstaking review more comfortably. Jonathan Brent, YIVO's executive director, said papers were found in suitcases, bureau drawers and wrapped packages. ''It looks like the apartment of a great writer, a tremendous literary mind, but there's a pathos about the decrepitude and poverty and lack of air,'' he said. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]