Wed 10/25 @ 7-8:45PM
The newest touring special exhibition a the Maltz Museum, titled The Girl in the Diary: Searching for Rywka from Lodz Ghetto, is based on the notebook of a young Jewish girl written in 1943-44 while she was imprisoned in Poland’s Lodz Ghetto. It was found by a Soviet doctor in the ashes of the newly liberated Auschwitz-Birkenau Camp where she most likely died. (Her fate is unknown.)
The show features excerpt from the diary alongside expert commentary, photos, and historical artifacts, recreating life in the Lodz Ghetto and the hardships endured by the people there. While there are no known photos of Rywka, the show includes photos documenting the Lodz Ghetto by three of the best-known photographers working there.
Show curator Tomasz Strug says, “I like to think that somewhere in those photographs or in one of the thousands of other archival pictures taken in the Lodz Ghetto there is Rywka smiling at us, only we do not know this yet.”
Rywka’s story is also primarily one of women during the war.
“Most wartime narratives and memories of the German occupation concentrate on the fate of men,” the show’s promotion tells us. “In Rywka’s world, the perspective is the opposite. Men appear in the diary, but remain in the background. The world we get to know from Rywka’s diary is populated by women and its structure is created by relations between them.The exhibition concentrates on this aspect, bringing visitors into the world of the women Rywka describes in her diary. In order to not interfere with this unique narrative, all the commentaries used to supplement the text of the diary were also prepared by women.”
The show opens on Wednesday October 25 with a launch event at 7pm A representative from the Galicia Museum in Krakow, Poland, where the show originated, will be on hand to talk about its development. There’ll also be an opportunity for a Q&A and a guided our.
The Girl in the Diary will be on view here through April 28, 2024. For more information and tickets, go to maltzmuseum.org or call 216-593-0575.
Beachwood, OH 44122