Photograph by
Roman Vishniac,
Mara Vishniac
Kohn

Retrieving the
first cache of the
Ringelblum
Archive, Warsaw,
1946.

Children of a Vanished World: Photographs by Roman Vishniac
The world-renowned photographer Roman Vishniac traveled to cities and villages in Eastern Europe between 1935 and 1938 and documented aspects of life in the rapidly changing Jewish communities. This exhibition is drawn from the 70 photographs in Children of a Vanished World (University of California Press, 1999), edited by Mara Vishniac Kohn and Miriam Hartman Flacks. Vishniac's photographs preserve the lives of these children as they studied, lived, learned, and played with one another in a world that was changing forever.

A musical "sound loop" made especially for the exhibit is also included. It contains period recordings of six Yiddish songs: Oyfn Pripetshik (On the Oven's Hearth), Bin Ikh Mir a Shnayderl (I am a Little Tailor), Rozhinkes mit Mandlen (Raisins and Almonds), Yankele (Yankele), Tsipele (Tsipele), Hulyet, Hulyet Kinderlekh (Revel, Little Ones). The melodies were chosen to complement and give context to the photographs.

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Scream the Truth at the World - Emanuel Ringelblum and the Hidden Archive of the Warsaw Ghetto
Recognizing that the events unfolding around him in Europe in the fall of 1939 were unprecedented, and that they would require careful documentation, Warsaw historian Emanuel Ringelblum gathered a few dozen writers, historians, rabbis, teachers, and welfare workers to form a group code-named Oyneg Shabbes [Joy of Sabbath]. The mission of Oyneg Shabbes was to document Jewish life in Nazi occupied Poland. Reports on the deportation and murder of Jews, as well as ghetto artifacts, photographs, children's school essays, and ghetto art were collected by the clandestine group from September 1939 until January 1943.

As the Nazis began liquidating the Warsaw Ghetto, members of Oyneg Shabbes buried the archive in several containers. On September 18, 1946, the first cache was pulled from the ghetto's rubble; a second cache was found in 1950; the last cache has never been discovered. Less than a handful of the group's members survived. The Ringelblum Archive, as the materials came to be known, is the most important source for and the most poignant testimony to the destruction of Warsaw Jewry.

High quality reproductions of approximately 50 artifacts from the archives of the Jewish Historical Institute, Warsaw and a short film showing the recovery of the hidden archive make up this exhibition.

Explore an online preview of Scream the Truth at the World.

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A Young Girl at Ghetto Terezin: 1941-1944
Drawings by Helga Weissová Hosková
Photographic reproductions of 15 drawings by Helga Weissová, a teenage girl living in Terezin, have been produced by the Museum of Jewish Heritage for exhibition. Accompanying the photographs are excerpts from Helga's diary, a map of the region, and related materials that depict Helga's view of life in the Terezin Ghetto in Czechoslovakia during the Holocaust.

During an exhibit of children's works in Terezin, Helga was told to throw hers away because they were too truthful and accurate. Instead, she saved them. When she and her mother were deported to Auschwitz in September 1944, Helga entrusted the pictures to her uncle. He hid them in a wall until liberation, and then took them back to Prague. Miraculously, Helga and her mother also survived, having been transferred from Auschwitz to a work detail in Germany.

Beginning in February 2008, Ours To Fight For: American Jews in the Second World War will be traveling. Check back to see where and when the exhibition will be on view. If you would like to bring the exhibition to your venue, please contact travelingexhibitions@mjhnyc.org.