This article analyses the auditory experiences of the Warsaw Ghetto inhabitants to understand what they reveal about life within the ghetto. Grounded in a vast array of personal testimonies, this research provides a more nuanced understanding of the ghetto auditory daily realities. The focus on the Warsaw Ghetto presents an opportunity to examine how its Read More
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“I Loved Him as a Father”: The Silences of Hiding-Related Sexual Violence
Clara Vromen was born on September 27, 1931, in the Dutch city of Enschede to Jewish parents Abraham Vromen (b. unknown) and Minnie van Dam (b. 1907). Her father was a businessman and a member of the Zionist youth movement, who organized the hachsharot, the Palestine pioneering training programs, for German Jewish refugees in the Read More
Uncovering Local Jewish Histories: Hungarian Jewish Community History Books
In the aftermath of the Holocaust, many Jews in Hungary returned to discover the destruction of their small communities. All Jews outside the capital city, Budapest, had been deported between April and July 1944. This came to approximately 440,000 people, many of whom were murdered in the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau. As the few survivors Read More
An Excruciating Month: A History and Topography of the Pest Ghetto
“After Ilonka and I were shown to an apartment in a building, we stayed inside with one group of children, huddling because of the cold. […] I was aware of the scary situation we were in, but unlike Ilonka, I did not feel scared. In fact, I did not feel much of anything at all, Read More
Ukrainian Police and the Holocaust in Ukraine. A Brief Overview
When German troops occupied the city of Zvenigorodka (Cherkasy Oblast) on July 29, 1941, approximately 1,300 local Jews and refugees from the west lived there, which was just over ten percent of the total population. There were no spontaneous pogroms here; instead, Nazi occupiers forced all Jews to register and sent them to forced labor Read More
Digital Holocaust Media at the Jewish Museum in Prague
In an increasingly digital world, museums and archives have long incorporated the use of digital media technologies, applications, and resources to support research, exhibitions, and education initiatives. As a recipient of the European Holocaust Research Infrastructure’s Conny Kristel Fellowship, I spent four weeks at the Jewish Museum in Prague (JMP), a multi-building site spread across Read More
Exploring Lived Experience: Pinus Rubinstein’s Diary of the War and the Holocaust in Cernăuți
On February 16, 1947, Pinus Rubinstein a Holocaust survivor from Cernăuți (Ukr. Chernivtsi), then living in Romania, was preparing to leave for Palestine. He wrote in his diary: Today is probably the hardest day of my life. Put my files and documents in order. With a bleeding heart, I must sacrifice and destroy dear, expensive Read More
From Urban Legend to Documented Fact: The History and Memory of the Jewish Ghetto and the Holocaust in Kherson
Kherson is a large city in southern Ukraine and the regional center of the Kherson region. After the Germans occupied the city in August 1941, they established a Jewish ghetto in the city. Yet, eighty years later this very real story has become an urban legend of sorts. Even a few years ago, when I Read More
The Rescue of Jews in Albania during the Holocaust: A Story that is Still Unfolding…
“There is no religious or race prejudice in that country on the Adriatic”1 Herman Bernstein (US Ambassador to Albania, 1930-1933). Background As a recipient of the EHRI-Conny Kristel fellowship, I spent a short research period at the Fondazione Centro Di Documentazione Ebraica Contemporanea (CDEC) in Milan, Italy. CDEC is an independent research institute for the Read More
The “Tombstones Affair”: On the Fate of Jewish Cemeteries in Odessa under the Romanian Occupation (1941-1944)
The newspaper article, entitled “Looting of Jewish cemeteries in Odessa,” was probably published in spring 1945. According to it, “the transportation to Bucharest, in several wagons, of tombstones taken from the graves of Jewish cemeteries in Odessa” took place. The Odessa city hall sold the tombstones to various individuals and the mayor Gherman Pântea approved Read More
