Jewish Studies Interdisciplinary Program

Who Will Write Our History?

Tuesday, November 21, 2017 - 7:00pm to 9:45pm

Location:
Whitsett Room
Cost:
Free

Ringelblum ArchivesRoberta Grossman, a highly accomplished filmmaker, will be discussing her work producing a documentary about the creation of the Archives by Jews imprisoned in the Warsaw Ghetto. 

Led by Jewish historian Dr. Emanuel Ringelblum, a group of historians, writers, rabbis and social workers, was dedicated to chronicling life in the Ghetto during the Nazi occupation. They collected documents and solicited testimonies and reports from dozens of volunteers of all ages. The materials submitted included essays, diaries, drawings, wall posters and other materials describing life in the Ghetto. The collection work started in September 1939 and ended in January 1943.

Discovered in 1946 and 1950, the thousands of surviving documents of the Archive were housed in underfunded conditions in the Jewish Historical Institute of Warsaw for decades. Written in Yiddish and Polish and largely untranslated, the Archives remained largely unknown outside of academic circles. Only in 1990 was funding available to apply modern preservation techniques on the crumbling treasure. Historian Samuel Kassow's wrote the seminal work on the Archive, Who Will Write Our History? (Indiana University Press, 2007).  Roberta Grossman’s documentary is based on this book.

(left: unearthed milk cans containing a portion of the Warsaw Ghetto Archives)

For more information, please click here to visit the the website for Who Will Write Our History.

For your convenience, a map to the event is provided.

Everyone is invited, but space is very limited. Please call (818) 677-4724 or email jewish.studies@csun.edu to reserve a seat.