GHETTO FIGHTERS' HOUSE

GHETTO FIGHTERS' HOUSE (Heb. בֵּית לוֹחֲמֵי הַגֶטָּאוֹת, Beit Loḥamei ha-Getta'ot), a ghetto uprising and Holocaust remembrance authority, established in kibbutz Loḥamei ha-Getta'ot , on April 19, 1950, by a group of former ghetto fighters and partisans. The house serves as a memorial and research and documentation center on the Holocaust period, and on Jewish resistance under Nazi rule in Europe. It contains an important historical archive on the Holocaust, and particularly on organized resistance; papers left by the poet itzhak katzenelson , after whom it is named; documents from the He-Ḥalutz archives in the Warsaw and Bialystok ghettos; a collection of the publications of the Jewish underground in occupied Poland; on the Jewish underground in Holland and France; a register of names of Jewish partisans who fought in Italy and Yugoslavia; and photographs, films, and pictures. It also contains the papers of yitzhak zuckerman and Miriam Nocitch, a collection of 60 diaries in different languages, and several thousand testimonies of Holocaust survivors. The museum maintains a permanent display as well as special exhibits dealing with different aspects of the Holocaust and Jewish resistance; models of the Warsaw ghetto and the treblinka death camp are on show. In 2005 the Museum's permanent exhibition underwent a significant upgrading that will take several years to complete. On the national Holocaust Remembrance Day in Israel (27th of Nisan), a mass memorial assembly is held at the amphitheater outside the museum. The Ghetto Fighters' House has published a series of books and periodicals, Dappim le-Ḥeker ha-Sho'ah ve-ha-Mered (1951–52, 1969); and Yedi'ot Beit Loḥamei ha-Getta'ot al shem Yiẓḥak Katzenelson (1951–60). The Museum also has a highly acclaimed children's exhibition, Yad la-Yeled, designed to tell the story of the Holocaust to younger children. Designed by Ram Karmi, the exhibit is semicircular, descending into the depths of the earth. It unfolds section by section, not allowing the visitor to take in the entire exhibition at once, and tells the story of the Holocaust through the testimonies of those who were children during the Holocaust and through documents and imaginative reconstructions that suggest the magnitude of what happened in a manner that children can understand. At the center of the exhibition is a janusz korczak room, based on the work of the famed Polish-Jewish educator and physician who ran an orphanage in the ghetto. This world of imagination and the empowerment of children here contrast boldly with the contents of the rest of the Museum. Educational activities in arts and crafts, drama, and music enable children to process what they have experienced. Among the other activities of the Museum, aside from those related to the Holocaust, are the international book-sharing project and work in democracy and pluralism that attracts neighboring Arab and Jewish communities in Galilee.