News

fot. Jarrod Freedman Photography

The travelling exhibition of the Jewish Historical Institute, which we presented in 2023 at the NS-Dokumentationszentrum in Munich, has left Europe for the first time and has reached Australia. It will be presented as the first exhibition in the newly renovated Melbourne Holocaust Museum until March 2025.

“Australia became one of the places where Holocaust survivors emigrated after the war. Families from such Polish cities as Lodz, Bialystok, Czestochowa and Warsaw found their new home in Melbourne. Many of those involved in the Jewish diaspora in Melbourne are connected to Warsaw. Their stories complement the main narrative of the exhibition. A dedicated section presents the fate of several families. This personal and local feature of the exhibition shows that this distant history did not happen in a void, that it had and still has an impact on the lives of successive generations of Holocaust survivors,” says JHI director Dr Michał Trębacz about the exhibition.

The director of the Jewish Historical Institute participated in the exhibition’s opening, during which he gave an inaugural lecture. Also, Prof. Samuel Kassow, a member of the Programme Board of the Jewish Historical Institute, gave a lecture at the opening.

The story told in the exhibition “Underground: The Hidden Archive of the Warsaw Ghetto” focuses on the activities of Emanuel Ringelblum and the Oneg Shabbat group and the fate of the unique archive they created, from its beginnings to the present day. The exhibition looks at the ghetto from a Jewish perspective, placing the Underground Archive of the Warsaw Ghetto, the so-called Ringelblum Archive, at the center of this story and allowing the documents and photos to speak for themselves.

The exhibition will be available for viewing until March 30, 2025.

International curators: 
Dr Piotr Rypson
Dr Ulla-Britta Vollhardt
Dr Mirjam Zadoff

International exhibition design:
Tido Brussing Szenerien 
Kasia Warpas

Australian curator:
Sandy Saxon

Australian exhibition design:
Artklass
Rowan Cochrane
Space Arrangers
Studio Tweed
Synthesis Design + Build

Historical consultation:
dr hab. Katarzyna Person
dr Maria Ferenc

Voice recordings:
Münchner Kammerspiele

Exhibition Partners

Underground: The Hidden Archive of the Warsaw Ghetto is presented by the Melbourne Holocaust Muzeum 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.

Exhibition Sponsors

Gerry and Lillian Pearce
The Embassy for the Federal Republic of Germany

Programming Sponsors

The Jewish Quarterly
The Australian Centre for Jewish Civilisation, Monash University