Film Screening: “Who Will Write Our History” with Professor Sam Kassow

The Jewish Quarterly and the Melbourne Holocaust Museum invite you to this remarkable documentary, in which filmmaker Roberta Grossman explores the lives and personalities of the men and women who contributed to the secret archive of the Warsaw Ghetto. Active from the time of the ghetto’s being sealed until its final eradication in early 1943, the “Oneg Shabbat” archive succeeded in preserving a comprehensive picture of the Jews of Warsaw in their struggle to survive. This film portrays that struggle, the setbacks of the archivists, their triumphs and their fate. It will be introduced by Professor Sam Kassow, who will speak for 40 minutes and will set this story in its local and historical context.
This film 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.