Update on Two Upcoming Exhibitions at the Museum of Family History

The Museum of Family History is readying two new online exhibitions about the Jewish "experience" in Europe before, during and after World War II and the Holocaust.

These two exhibitions (and a third one to come later this year or early next) will, after the exhibition is finished, be partly integrated into the Museum's "World War II and the Holocaust" wing.

These two exhibitions will deal mainly with the Jewish ghettos that were formed in Europe during World War II as well as more than three dozen concentration, extermination, labor and transit camps that much of the Jewish population of Europe were incarcerated in.

The third exhibition, entitled "Persecution and Flight: The Nazi Campaign Against the Jews," will similar in nature to the other two exhibitions, though it will mostly deal with the period before the Second World War.

Within these exhibitions you will see photographs taken in Europe before, during and after the war. You will also see and hear testimony from some who survived the War. Most interestingly, perhaps for some, will be the many pieces of postal mail that will demonstrate to the Museum visitor some of the types of mail that were sent between those imprisoned (as well as from some who worked in the ghettos and camps) and the outside world. I would suspect that most who will visit these two exhibitions have never seen such examples, or at least very few at best.

There is still time for those of you who might have interesting period photographs, audio and video clips, written testimony, that might fit in well with the theme of these exhibitions. If you do have such material and wish for the Museum to add it to the exhibitions, please contact the Museum at postmaster@museumoffamilyhistory.com with the following phrase in the Subject line of your e-mail "World War II and the Holocaust Exhibitions."

The first ones to view these two new online exhibitions will be those who have signed up to receive the Museum's e-newsletter "Perspectives," which to date has only been published twice, the last time quite a while ago. This is a perk of signing up for the newsletter, i.e. you get a chance to preview selected new exhibitions before the general public.

Perhaps three or four weeks subsequent to the sending out of Perspectives, a general announcement will be made to the public of its availability. Thus if you have not already done so, you might like to sign up for Perspectives. You can do so by clicking here. Please read the entire Perspectives signup page before signing up.

New "Walk in My Shoes: Collected Memories of the Holocaust" Entry for Kaunas, Lithuania

Ed (Ephraim) Gruzin was born in 1927 in Kaunas (Kovno), and is a survivor of the Kovno Ghetto and Kaufering concentration camp number one near Landsberg, Germany. He has written a biography of his life and has graciously given permission to the Museum to make his story available to all museum "visitors."

You can read his story, as well as see some of his family pictures, by clicking here.

This is the Museum's first WIMS entry for Lithuania. More such stories are welcome, no matter from what country the Survivor comes from.

MOFH Film Series: Now Playing until April 18th

Now showing within the Museum of Family History's Film Series, through April 18th:

Film no. 1:

Archival film from 1936 showing the Jewish district of Kazimierz in Krakow (3 mins, 26 secs). Most of these buildings can be visited today and are in a similar condition - only the people who walked those streets are long since gone.

The original [version] of this film is in the Polish film archives in ul. Chelmska in Warsaw. -- From YouTube.

Note that there is another version of this film on YouTube that states the film is of Kazimierz in 1938-9, not 1936.

This short film "The Jews of Krakow's Kazimierz District," can be found at www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/fs-krakow-kazimierz.htm .

Film no. 2:

From the exhibition "The Jewish Ghetto," coming to you at the Museum of Family History sometime in 2010:

"The Ghettos of Dąbrowa Górnicza and Będzin" (10 mins, 51 secs):

A film in two parts, shot in the ghettos of Dąbrowa Górnicza and Będzin, probably at the beginning of the ghettos.

Dabrowa Górnicza is part of the Katowice conurbation. Jews settled in Dąbrowa Górnicza in the middle of the 19th century. There were 4,304 Jews living in Dąbrowa Górnicza according to the 1921 census (11% of the total population).

The German army captured Dąbrowa Górnicza on 3 September 1939. In the fall of 1940 several hundred young Jewish men were deported to slave labor camps in Germany. Several hundred more were deported in the course of 1941. At the end of that year a ghetto was established. On 5 May 1942, the first deportation took place in which 630 Jews were taken to Auschwitz and exterminated. In the second deportation, conducted on 12 August 1942, another few hundred Jews were sent to their death in Auschwitz. On 26 June 1943, the ghetto in Dąbrowa Górnicza was liquidated and all its inmates were transferred to the ghetto in Srodula (a suburb of Sosnowiec), the only ghetto still existing in Upper Silesia. It too was liquidated and all its inhabitants, including the Jews from Dąbrowa Górnicza, deported to Auschwitz and killed.

According to the 1921 census, there were 17,298 Jews in Będzin or 62.1 percent of its total population. By 1938, the number of Jews had increased to about 22,500.

Situated close to the border, Będzin was quickly captured by the Wehrmacht. On 7 September, persecution of the Jews began, with the instituting of economic sanctions. On 8 September, the Będzin synagogue was burned, and the first massacre of local Jews took place.

The ghetto was founded in May 1942 but deportations had started as early as October 1940. Despite cooperation with the occupiers as is shown in this film, several large deportations took place in 1942. The last major deportations took place in 1943: 5,000 were deported on 22 June 1943 and 8,000 around 13 August 1943. About 1,000 remaining Jews were deported in the subsequent months. A rising took place in August 1943 which was put down and the ghetto was eliminated.

This film is held in the Polish film archive in ul. Chelmska, Warsaw. -- From YouTube.

The film can be found at www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/fs-ghettos-dabrowa-gornicza-bedzin.htm .

Film no. 3:

Jolson sings in "Hallelujah, I'm a Bum!"

The film trailer.
"The picture, some persons may be glad to hear, has no 'Mammy' song. It is Mr. Jolson's best film and well it might be, for that clever director, Lewis Milestone, guided its destiny, and the supporting cast includes Frank Morgan, the beautiful Madge Evans, the pathetically comic Harry Langdon and that veteran of Keystone days, Chester Conklin. It is a combination of fun, melody and romance, with a dash of satire, all of which make for an ingratiating entertainment..."-- From the New York Times, Feb. 9, 1933.

Don't forget to visit the Museum's large Al Jolson exhibition titled "The Immortal Al Jolson" (and see and hear many more videos, not to mention more than forty sound clips) at www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/ajolson.htm .

Two new films of interest showing deportations from Galicia, Lodz and Krakow

I'd like to invite you to see two more of the Museum of Family History's Film Series short films, showing at the Museum until April 4th.

At least three separate locales seem to be part of this first film, and one is supposedly a Galician village from during the war. You can also see during the last minute and a half of the film what appears to be the deportation of Jews from the Lodz Ghetto. I'm hoping that someone can confirm this for me. While watching the end of this film I felt that I was in the railroad car as people were boarding it. It's one thing to read about the deportations, or see still photos of it, or even see films about the Lodz ghetto, e.g. the film about Irena Sendler, but it is another thing to see the actual footage.

I am hoping that someone who once lived in these areas or are otherwise well familiar with the landmarks in these towns will be able to identify the town. If so, please let me know and I will tell those on the list in another posting. It is unlikely that you will recognize anyone in the film, but one never knows.

The name of the clip is "Deportations of Jews" (aka "Deportation to the Death Camps"), and supposedly the film was taken by a Nazi cameraman. For me, the film is powerfully evocative and at times eerie, especially if you choose to listen to the soundtrack which is said to have been added at a later date. The film is nearly eight and a half minutes long.

The film clip can be watched at www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/fs-deportation-deathcamps.htm .

The second film is a shorter one, but nevertheless impactful as it shows the deportation of residents to the Krakow ghetto. The link for this short film is www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/fs-deportation-ghetto-krakow.htm .

Links to the current films available for viewing within the Museum's Film Series can be found at www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/mfh-films.htm .

Brooklyn's 16th Ward Ghetto in 1899

Another article, this one from an 1899 edition of the Brooklyn Daily-Eagle, in which a reporter is taken on a tour of the then Sixteenth Ward--the Brunswick/East Williamsburg area of Brooklyn--and reports on the deplorable conditions he found there. The article starts in part:

There are many sweatshops in the Sixteenth Ward Ghetto which, from time to time, have been inspected by the Health authorities of this borough.... Great numbers of garments, cheap and costly, such as are worn by men, women and children, are made in these shops, and these goods are sold in every borough of Greater New York. For this reason, my reader, if for no other, you have a personal interest in this Ghetto, as you will see even by even brief reflection. For the germs of deadly disease maybe conveyed long distances in clothing. The makers of these skirts, cloaks, shirts, trousers, overcoats and children's clothing are, for a great part, Polish and Russian Jews, who toil in such unsanitary shops....and [they] live in miserable little rooms of poorly constructed old wooden tenements. Hundreds of these toilers cannot speak English, are unfamiliar with our laws and customs, have come from lands in which oppression and dire poverty drove them into wretched habitations from which pure air, sunshine and the water necessarily to cleanliness were shut out....

You can read the full article at www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/bklyn-16thwardghetto.htm.
You can chooose from more than one hundred other articles published around the turn of the twentieth century at www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/archive-newspaper.htm.

The Litvak and Galitzianer East Side Tailor: How Both Tried to Better Themselves in the 1890s

It seems that there were two ghettos, or Jewish quarters, on the Lower East Side in the 1890s, at least according to an article published in an 1895 edition of the Sun newspaper of New York City. There was the Russian or Lithuanian (or Litvak) quarter, mostly situated around Hester Street, and a quarter surrounding Pitt Street, where many Galicians, Hungarians and Bohemians lived. Both had their own "Pig Markets," which meant that at that time one could buy almost anything in those markets except pork.

It is pointed out that the Russians far outnumbered the Austrian workers, but that the Austrian worker made up for their lack of numbers by their higher grade of work.

The author of this article compares and contrasts those living in both quarters, and describes how, for instance, the tailors involved in the coat-making industry of both quarters tried to better themselves, e.g. to learn English, and to better educate themselves in order to advance at work, etc.

You can read the interesting article, entitled "New York's Two Ghettos," by clicking here.

The Dish Lender of the East Side, 1905

A reporter from New York's Daily Tribune visited the East Side of New York City in order to do a story about a "novel industry" that once existed there.

It seems that one could visit tiny shops, often located in the cellars of Ghetto tenement houses, and rent dishes there. The reporter, who was not Jewish, visited at least two such shops. The author of this article also portrays different characters he met along his journey.

None of us lived on the East Side in 1905, so perhaps you might enjoy reading this article and visualizing the reporter's journey as he paints for us a colorful picture of one aspect of life on the East Side of Manhattan.

You can find this article at www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/les-hww-dishlenders.htm .