A Passover haggadah produced from memory while in hiding from the Nazis, a matzah cover retrieved after the Holocaust, and an image of matzah baking in the Lodz ghetto.
These are just some of the many artifacts and photographs which have been put together by Yad Vashem for its new, online exhibition recalling the Passover holiday during the Holocaust era.
The exhibition, which is now online, illustrates the stories of Jews caught up in the horrors of the Nazi genocide and cataclysmic world...
The COVID-19 public health crisis is having an unprecedented impact on the American work force, including the federal government and its FOIA and MDR offices.
Some agencies are making submitting FOIA requests more difficult, even going so far as to shutter their Records Management offices, while others are making it easier to submit requests electronically. The disparate approaches across the federal government are causing confusion for many FOIA requesters.
Read more here.
Librarians and Archivists with Palestine invites you to join our international reading campaign, One Book, Many Communities, to be held in May and June 2020. Our One Book title for 2020 is The Book of Disappearance by Ibtisam Azem.
Set in modern-day Jaffa and the greater Tel Aviv area, the story follows Alaa, a Palestinian citizen of Israel, and his friend Ariel, a Jewish Israeli. After Alaa disappears, Ariel finds Alaa’s journals. Alaa’s memory of his late grandmother, a survivor of the Nakba...
Something important to you missing from this newsletter? Send a submission my way and let me know what you would like to see.
Please submit newsletter items about archives and human rights (writ broadly) to hilary.h.barlow@gmail.com. These can be recent publications, upcoming events or exhibitions, opportunities and scholarships, or something else entirely as long as it connects to archives and human rights. For the May newsletter, please send you submission by May 25, 2020.
The Human Rights Archives section is seeking candidates to run for the following positions to serve as part of the steering committee starting in August 2020. Over the years the HRA has developed and matured. If elected to serve, your participation will be crucial to setting the goals and mission of the section.
The commitment for this section is as follows (attending the Annual Meeting is not required):-Monthly steering committee call lasting 1 hour -Commitment to section projects with...
The death of George Floyd, who died while in police custody on Monday, is heartbreaking for the Minneapolis community, the African American community and our entire nation. As Dr. King said, injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. This incident is further proof that racism and implicit bias continue to plague our nation and, as they did on May 25, they rear their heads with devastating results. It has been said before and I will repeat it now, being black in America should not be...
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum invites you to the 2020 Arthur and Rochelle Belfer National Conference for Educators on July 20–21. The conference is free to pre-service teachers, middle and high school educators, and community college faculty interested in teaching about the Holocaust. While the conference is designed for educators with less than five years experience teaching about the Holocaust, educators with more experience are also invited to attend. Due to the public health...
When considering the statement “all archives are human rights archives,” the dispersed corpus of Native American boarding school records uniquely bears the weight of these words. The Human Rights Watch defines human rights as “the basic rights and freedoms to which everyone is entitled on the basis of their common humanity. They include civil and political rights, as well as economic, social, and cultural rights.” Severe and fatal violations of these rights occurred during the nearly century-...
Filming and sharing documentation for human rights can expose injustices, put a spotlight on stories rarely heard, and create movements that hold perpetrators and decision-makers accountable. But if advocating for accountability is dangerous on a normal day, even more so during a global pandemic. This is why the WITNESS team is devoted to working with allies and partners around the world to make our collective filming and documentation expertise available to anyone, anywhere who wants to use...
Among the new educational initiatives is a free virtual lesson for high school students (modelled after a pre-existing Museum school program), where CMHR program interpreters interact with students in real time, online from their homes.
The Museum has also adapted its unique Be an Upstander online learning resource for Grades 5 to 8. In addition to the interactive web site, it now includes a new introductory video for students, filmed in the Rights Today gallery, and an adapted teacher guide...
From the late 1800s to mid 1900s, Canada’s Black Railway Porters were a group of workers who disrupted the system, becoming instrumental in leading the fight for fair employment practices and anti-discriminatory laws. Step back in time and learn about the lives of these pioneers whose tireless work, on and off the track, were instrumental in paving a new path for greater equality in Canada.
Join us for this panel discussion featuring a dramatic reading which looks at the lives of pioneers who...
In case you missed it, SAA has a page of collected resources for the current health crisis. It includes aid funds for individual cultural heritage workers and organizations, plus information on remote work, professional development, and reopening precautions.
View the the list here.
Something important to you missing from this newsletter? Send a submission my way and let me know what you would like to see.
Please submit newsletter items about archives and human rights (writ broadly) to hilary.h.barlow@gmail.com. These can be recent publications, upcoming events or exhibitions, opportunities and scholarships, or something else entirely as long as it connects to archives and human rights. For the June newsletter, please send you submission by June 23, 2020.
The 2019 election for the Human Rights Archives section of the Society of American Archivists has the following candidates running for the following positions:
1 incoming co-chair position serving 2 years
4 steering committee member positions ech serving a 1 year term
Ballots will be managed by SAA and distributed in late June to all SAA registered members. Results will be announced in July via SAA listservs, the HRA blog, and Twitter social media account.
Co-Chair Candidates (1 open...
On Friday, June 19th, Documenting the Now hosted a live streamed conversation with WITNESS, The Blackivists, Texas After Violence Project, and Project STAND. We are so thankful to the 800+ attendees and to our amazing panelists: Tracy Drake, Raquel Flores-Clemons, Erin Glasco, Stacie Williams, Skyla Hearn, Steven Booth, Gabriel Solis, Yvonne Ng, Lae’l Hughes-Watkins, and Jessica Ballard. Also much thanks to the Documenting the Now team members who helped put the event together: Alexandra Dolan-...
We are Black memory workers committed to documenting the Black experience during the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic and the current uprisings brought about by racist police violence against Black people. Our work is imperative, especially as we witness this dual assault white supremacy has unleashed on Black people. We offer this call to action to ethically and comprehensively archive during this moment, to ensure that we shine light onto the oppressive systems that disproportionately subject Black...
As racial terror against Black Americans continues, many cultural heritage associations and organizations have chosen to remain silent thus far. This is inexcusable, dangerous, and implies complicity on the part of those organizations. Archivists have a responsibility to combat racist practices in our profession and at large, particularly given the overwhelming whiteness of our profession. We therefore call on all cultural heritage organizations to publicly stand with the Black Lives Matter...
As noted in the Society of American Archivists’ June 2 Statement on Black Lives and Archives, the vitality of American archives depends on the safety of archives workers and an explicit commitment to social responsibility, justice, and anti-racism in the work that we do and the organizations we work within.
The SAA Council convened this forum of reflection to move toward healing and understanding on the continuation of anti-Black violence and provide an affirmation of the importance of Black...
In recent years, I’ve spoken (or tweeted) in passing about some of the ways I’ve been disabled by traditional academic conference models. I am intentionally using the verb tense “disabled.” Where the medical model of disability argues that I am rendered incapable by my own broken and deficient body, the social model of disability emphasizes that we are disabled by the hostility and inflexibility of our environment. The social model reminds me that pain and discomfort is not the inevitable price...
The Board of Trustees of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR) has announced immediate action to address recent allegations of systemic racism, discrimination and claims of sexual harassment at the Museum.
“These allegations were not properly escalated to the Board of Trustees,” said Board Chair Pauline Rafferty. “Now that we have a more complete understanding of these events, we are taking immediate action and will undertake long‐term steps to address these issues.”
The Board and CMHR...
The LGBTQ Oral History Digital Collaboratory is excited to announce the completion of the Trans Collections Guide for The ArQuives: Canada’s LGBTQ2+ Archives! Drawing on research supported by the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, a rotating team of Collaboratory and members of The ArQuives have been hard at work for the past six years to create The ArQuives’ first-ever Trans Collections Guide, offering researchers much-needed insight into The ArQuives’ extensive trans-...
The RBML’s archival, manuscript, oral history and University Archives are full of materials from people who were out and proud, recently revealed queer collections and likely materials and people still somewhat closeted by historical forces and past archival practices rooted in homophobia.
You’re invited during PRIDE month, and every other month, to explore the collections we have on offer that begin to demonstrate the range of LGBTQIA people, voices and experiences.
Read more here.
Archives for Black Lives in Philadelphia (A4BLiP), formed in 2016, is a loose association that now includes 80+ archivists, librarians, and information professionals in the Delaware Valley concerned about the issues raised by the Black Lives Matter movement and interested in finding ways to react and engage as community members and as archival professionals.
A4BLiP has watched with alarm as Black library workers at the Free Library of Philadelphia (FLP) have surfaced significant complaints,...
There is perhaps no single figure whose own life and career embodies the promise, success, and continued challenges of civil rights for Black Americans than John Lewis. We mourn this tremendous loss and look back on his incredible history through our holdings dating back to the early 1960s, including the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom and “Bloody Sunday,” the first March from Selma to Montgomery.
Representative Lewis spent his life fighting for human rights and civil liberties and...
In October, the Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies welcomed Hasan Hasanovic to campus to discuss his experience as a survivor of the Srebrenica genocide. Mr. Hasanovic was 18 when Bosnian Serbs systematically murdered more than 8,000 Bosniak men and boys in July 1995. Since then, Mr. Hasanovic has written an account of his story, Surviving Srebrenica (The Lumphanen Press, 2016), and spoken around the world on the topic of Srebrenica and genocide more broadly. For the last decade, he...
