The Secret Archive: Women in the Ghetto

For many years, historians of the Holocaust focused exclusively on the experiences of men: men who were in hiding, who were deported to camps, who languished in ghettos or who took up arms and fought. We know - both from the historical record and from the testimony of survivors - that women experienced the same things in fundamentally different ways, and at times experienced fundamentally different tribulations. Join us for this lecture delivered by Dr Breann Fallon will look at the Holocaust through a "herstory" lens: in what ways did women experience the Warsaw Ghetto and in what ways did they resist? Special attention will be given to the evidence from the secret archive of the Warsaw Ghetto, some of which will be on display in our Underground exhibit.

This talk is presented as part of the public programming running alongside the Melbourne Holocaust Museum's inaugural special exhibition in the new Alter Special Exhibitions Gallery - Underground: The Secret Archive of the Warsaw Ghetto. On display for the first time outside of Europe, Underground exhibits rare artefacts from the hidden archive of the Warsaw Ghetto. This archive was led by historian Emanuel Ringelblum who initiated an unprecedented campaign to collect material in the ghetto—the collection today known as the Ringelblum Archive. This collective of academics, writers, and activists working secretly in the first attempt to document the German-initiated mass murder of European Jews as it was happening. The exhibition brings home to the viewer the act of resistance that the underground archive of the Warsaw Ghetto constituted—a never-ending, arduous, harrowing but ultimately successful attempt to write the story of the Holocaust from the perspective of its victims

Underground is on display at the Melbourne Holocaust Museum from 17 November 2024 to 30 March 2025.

Underground: The Hidden Archive of the Warsaw Ghetto is presented in partnership with the Jewish Historical Institute, Poland, the Association of the Jewish Historical Institute of Poland, and the Munich Documentation Center for the History of National Socialism, Germany.