This morning, I attended a session entitled ?Yizkor books, Weblogs and Ethnic Cleansing: Grassroots Documentation and New Technologies,? presented by Rosemary Horowitz of Appalachian State University and Andr?s Riedlmayer of Harvard University. The session was moderated by Stephen Naron,
The session focused on ?Yuzkor books? and other ways in which communities decimated by genocide and massive displacement have come together to preserve a historical record of their communities.
Horowitz focused her presentation primarily on ?A Tale of One City: Piotrkow Trybunalski,? a Yuzkor book edited by Ben Giladi. Riedlmayer expanded on this, and also discussed the websites that were created by survivors of the ethnic cleansing campaigns that took place in Serbia in the 1990s. (example)These websites present a special problem for historians and archivists because they are so ephemeral. If somone forgets to pay the hosting bill, valuable historical documentation may be lost forever.
Follow the link below for detailed notes from the session…
What follows is a highly impressionistic transcript of the session — basically my rough notes I typed out while listening.
Horowitz:
Because survivors of the Holocaust were unable to perform the traditional memorial rites for their friends and family, the books served as ?monuments in print? that helped meet the need. But the books are also considered ?books of life,? and a way for families with little first hand documentation of their own heritage to pass on something meaningful to their descendents. And the books serve as an important documentary source for the destruction of towns during the Holocaust.
Because the books were seen as memorials for those familiar with the town and people whose lives were chronicled, not as historical documents, they were printed and distributed in very small quanitites, and in some cases material was left out of some editions. (For example, a listing of those who died, which was assumed to be of little interest to those not directly related, was left out of some editions of an English translation of one book.) However, the books are now considered valuable historical sources, not just memorials. As such, they are attracting increasing interest from the library and archival communities.
Digitization project sponsored by the New York Public Library and the National Yiddish Book Center. The project allows electronic access to Yizkor books through the NYPL?s website. Users can also offer on-demand reprints of the books through the National Yiddish Book Center.
The HTML version greatly enhances the original material by providing contextual links, research sources, genealogical material, etc. However, it does not retain the structure of the original. Because users choose their own paths through the content, they may overlook the intent of the original author to portray the historical continuity of the community.
Andr?s Riedlmayer of Harvard University. Broader view of memorial books. They go back before the Holocaust ? for example the 1915 genocide of Armenian communities in Kayseri, Turkey or a book published by the Association of Polish Jews in Argentina published in Buenos Aires in 1949 to memorialize the lost Jewish communities of Poland. (This was published in Hebrew and English rather than Yiddish.)
Mentioned the Harvard ?migr? Interview Project, an effort begun with funding by the US Air Foce in the late 1940s. Interviews were conducted of displaced people in the US and Europe. The interviews were transcribed, mimeographed, and bound, and are now held by Harvard. (They have also been microfilmed.)
Other communities have also created similar books ? for example, ethnic German villages displaced from other parts of Eastern Eurpoe after WWII. Filipowa, Yugoslavia was destroyed by the Soviets in 1945. Its 5,000 german residents were placed in a camp, and its Lutheran Church was demolished. A book was later published documenting the community, and includes documentation of the community as it existed before its destruction. 350,000 Italians were also expelled from communities in the border zone between Italy and Yugoslavia, memorial books have also been created in this area.
In the more recent Bosnia, a country of around 4 million people, 2 million were displaced, and 200,000 were murdered. Memorial books have also been produced for some of these communities.
Town of Zvornik, Bosnia
In 1991, a census of the town revealed 48,208 muslims,
In 1995, the UN estimated that there were zero remaining. A book documents the community, including hand drawn maps showing where residents lived, photos of the town, etc.
The Bosnian Genocide happened just as the web was emerging, and websites were created from the beginning. These have evolved into born-digital ?Yizkorbucher,? documenting the heritage of communities that no longer exist. Unlike the printed books, the online version grows on a continual basis as more material is submitted: photos, e-mail addresses of survivors, etc. An example: www.opel.ca (about Serbian town) bijelina. Website sare a precious resource, but are very ephemeral. Small groups of individuals create them, and their electronic nature means there is likely no physical artifact. If the creators forget to pay their hosting bills, the material may disappear forever.
How do we preserve this memory?
There is an Internet Archive, but most of these sites are built in layers, and picture albums and dynamic features are often not captured. Questions if there would be a way to enlist archivists in helping ensure that these materials are not lost.
Questions: copyright issues with print on demand Yizkor books? Unclear. Many are orphan works. The reprints now show a copyright of the NYPL and The National Yiddish Book Center.
R. observes that material seems to crop up everywhere. Material is easily shared or ?borrowed? online. Multiple websites are created about the same place, and images show up in multiple places. Has the web subverted the concepts of authorship and copyright?
Naron asks: archivists are deeply concerned with primary sources ? have there been any efforts to gather the original materials used in the creation of these books together into archives? In some cases ? for example, Ben Gil. Requested that materials be sent to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in DC. But efforts are scattershot.
R. observed that these are adhoc publishing efforts ? there?s not a single company gathering the material, and most contributors don?t want to give up whatever small pieces of their heritage that they have retained. So the orginal may never really be gathered into one place.
Someone from the US Holocaust museum asked about whether they have looked at ?revisionist sites?. And is there any movement toward consensus history of these places, as opposed to personal histories?
There have been websites arguing that the genocide was justified by Serbian suffering in WWII, that parts of it didn?t happen, lionizing those convicted of war crimes, etc. But most of the memorial websites are not necessarily there to demonstrate suffering, but to bind the scattered communities together and mobilizing aid for rebuilding efforts.
Q: What types of organizations exist that could take in this material, within or outside of Bosnia?
A: R. the new consitution purposely weakens central government and promotes smaller ethic government. So the national government has little motivation and few resources for this type of project. You need server space, technical knowledge, and the language. All of these things are available. I would see the future of this happening outside of Bosnia (perhaps among refugee communities) because there is little attention to it within the country.
Why were necrology not included in some editions? Ben Gil. Saw two audiences: one composed of former pietrokovers, who cared about names as family histories, and the other a ?historical? reader who was supposedly not interested in this sort of thing.
LoC Minerva project: using webcrawling to archive some things, such as Katrina pages, 9/11, or those related to congress. Would be worth talking to to see if they could help with this effort?
R. The main problem is that the Internet Archive does not go below the surface, possibly as a means of economizing. Not all parts of site are captured.
Q: How do you find these sites?
R. Frequent googling. Pointers from other sites, and personal networking. Aggregation sites that list hometown web pages ? but often not maintained. It?s a hard thing, and it would be difficult to have an exhaustive registry, especially because many are so ephemeral.
Q: Any effort to contact the people making the sites and perhaps giving them suggestions on how to make sure things are archived?
Not really, other than impressing on them the value of what they have when communicating with them.