Faculty Research in Holocaust and Genocide Studies
2019-2020 CHGS Research Projects
Photo Exhibit of Ringelblum Archive at the Jewish Historical Institute, Warsaw Poland
CHGS Research: Stephenie Young, PhD, Faculty Associate, CHGS
The CHGS is proud to announce our new educational partnership with the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw, which houses the famous Ringelblum archive of the Jewish Ghetto documents in Warsaw http://www.jhi.pl/en. Emanuel Ringelblum established the underground archive of the Warsaw Ghetto in occupied Poland during WWII. He gathered together a group of people that came to be known as "Oneg Shabbat” — joy of Saturday. They had many different beliefs and political affiliations but came together to create an archive that includes interviews, testimonies, and information given by various people associated with the Ghetto and the fate of the Polish Jews. These were buried underground in milk cans in the hopes that future generations would be able to see these documents. As our inaugural event, Professor Stephenie Young (CHGs faculty research associate) will spend fall 2019 at the JHI to curate an exhibit which draws on the extensive photographic holdings of the Ringelblum archive. The CHGS plans to show the exhibit in Warsaw and then to bring it over to the U.S. to be displayed in Salem, Massachusetts and other cities across the country.
Fragments of Memory: Lost Notebooks of Children's Testimonies from the Holocaust
Research Team: Regina Kazyulina and Chris Mauriello
Among the many archival collections donated to the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies and its predecessor, the Holocaust Center Boston North (HCBN), are a series of notebooks and photographs from the Bergen-Belsen Displaced Persons (DP) Camp. The hand-written notebooks contain the testimonies of child Holocaust survivors that were transcribed by Fela Cymerman, a Polish survivor and teacher at the Bergen-Belsen DP Camp, in 1945 and 1946. When this collection was first discovered among the HCBN collections, nothing was known about its provenance, Fela Cymerman, or the children whose harrowing survival stories were partially transcribed in the notebooks. Thanks to the generosity of long-time supporters, Harold and Zellie Kaplan, and with help from SSU archivist, Susan Edwards, the notebooks were scanned and later translated by Polish translator, Sean Bye. Using records from the Bergen-Belsen Memorial Archives and the Arolsen Archives, Regina Kazyulina and Chris Mauriello were able to identify the children and trace their wartime and postwar fates, identify the teachers who recorded their testimonies, and ultimately unravel how these notebooks and accompanying photographs came to the North Shore. Having uncovered this history, Regina Kazyulina and Chris Mauriello are now writing a book that will recount the stories and experiences of the children as well as their teachers who did everything in their power, despite their own wartime traumas, to ensure the children’s stories and voices would not be forgotten