Past Continuous: The Ghetto Fighters’ House Archive Marks 75 Years
Sunday, April 27, 2025
2 PM EDT | 8 PM CET | 9 PM Israel
Opening Remarks:
Yigal Cohen CEO, Ghetto Fighters’ House
Anat Bratman-Elhalel Director, Ghetto Fighters’ House Archives
Liat Margalit Curator, Past Continuous Exhibition
Panel: “Connecting the Pages”: The Archive as a Bridge Between the Past and the Present
Chair:
Madene Shachar
Speakers:
Prof. Jan Grabowski
Anna Bikont
Prof. Dan Michman
Prof. Moshe Shner
Prof. Havi Dreifuss
Prof. Hanna Yablonka
The Ghetto Fighters’ House Archive was officially dedicated in April 1950. The kibbutz had been founded a year earlier, its members making a threefold commitment: founding a kibbutz, holding an annual memorial assembly, and establishing an archive that would be the core of a museum for the legacy of the Holocaust and the uprising. They felt a sense of duty to those who had not survived and saw building an archive as a direct continuation of the collection and documentation operations that the underground archivists had begun in Europe during the Holocaust. Early on, they understood the role of the archie as a public asset. So, while building their new lives in the State of Israel, they gathered and documented the recent past in documents, photographs, artifacts and paintings.
It was a pioneering, trailblazing, and massive endeavor. Today, 75 years later, the Ghetto Fighters’ House archives are still busy collecting, documenting and digitalizing one of the most important archives, securing that the history of the Holocaust and remembrance will be passed on from generation to generation.
In this program, we will hear about the vital work of the archives from the director, Anat Bratman-Elhalel. Liat Margalit, will talk about the newly launched exhibition that she curated, Past Continuous that is dedicated to the work of the Ghetto Fighters’ House Archives. Finally, we will meet some of the historians who were invited to actively contribute to the exhibition Past Continuous. They will share with our audience their personal choices of artifacts and documents that are especially meaningful to them, both personally and professionally.
“Every piece of paper, every picture, every document constitutes the bridge that we are building between the past and the present. It is our task to connect the pages to those who are living.”
(Miriam Novitch, the first curator and founder of the art collection at the Ghetto Fighters’ House Archives, 1952)
