Salon Jewish Studies Blog

Photography in Jerusalem, a website created by Hadassah College in cooperation with the educational website Snunit presents a carefully selected collection of pictures taken in the first half of the 20th Century together with some biographical information on the photographers. Amongst the photographers who are presented that way is pioneer Tsadok Bassan (1882-1956), the "court photographer" of the orthodox Old Yishuv, who also photographed the city's streets and population, and Alfred Bernheim (1885-1974), who documented documented the buildings of the architect Erich Mendelsohn and photographed many personalities of the cultural political Jewish elite in the 1940s. [Languages: English, Hebrew]

On Thursday the online archive Forced Labor 1939-1945 - Memory and History (only English homepage) was presented for the first time to the public. The project is a cooperation between the Freie Universität Berlin, the German Historical Museum and the Foundation "Erinnerung, Verantwortung und Zukunft" (Remembrance, Responsibility and Future). It is dedicated to over 12 Mio persons who had been forced to work for Nazi-Germany during WWII.
The archive provides access to 590 (192 video, 398 audio) interviews with 590 eyewitnesses from 26 countries. In addition to the interviews you will find transcripts, personal documents and photographs in the digital archive.
The access to the archive is restricted to (especially) pupils, students, scholars, research centers and further public institutions. ( For more information, please check the disclaimer [German only]). For further press material (English & German) click here.

The joint "project in progress" תמונות היסטוריות של ארץ ישראל - Historical photographs of the land of Israel (It is recommended to use the Hebrew homepage) documents in over 8.200 photographs -professionals and hobbyiest - Israels "characteristic landscapes and distinctive populace". The database (built with Digitool), set up and hosted by the Haifa University Library in cooperation with the Haifa University Department of Land of Israel Studies and the "Bitmuna"-Laboratory of Nadav Mann form Kibbutz Merhavia, includes 18 collections. Among them are the:

It is written on the homepage: "Over a period of many years, the Land was photographed from North to South by pilgrims, tourists and immigrants who were enchanted by the vision that greeted their eyes. Rare collections of photographs, stored in private homes, archives and assorted institutions, are in real danger of irreparable decay due to the ravages of time." According to this the project aims to preserve and present these unique photographs as part of Israeli cultural heritage.

The founders of Save the Music state on their project: "Save the Music is a 501c3 non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation of cultural music through its digitization and placement on the Internet. Founded by Roman Ajzen a few years ago, Save the Music has already become the leading collector of Jewish Music LP's in the world. Just as important is our goal to become a virtual meeting place for performers to interact and post upcoming concerts, events and releases. We aim to preserve the past and assist its renaissance in the future. We plan to offer streaming and on-demand listening options so that the site can serve as both an online radio station and library[the site already do that]. This unique combination caters to everything from leisurely listening to research and everything in between. Together with extensive supplemental content such as historical context, original lyrics, transliterated lyrics, and translated lyrics, Save the Music will offer an informative experience to newcomers and connoisseurs alike."
The content of the site is devided into different sub-sections. For example, you can search after artists, albums and performers as well as after certain songs in Hebrew (751 songs), Ladino (221 songs), Yiddish (655 songs), English (65 songs), French (2 songs) and Instrumental Jewish Music (202 songs). Overall more than 1800 songs and over 170 albums have been digitized until know. All the songs are listenable online.

The Center for Holcaust & Genocide Studies at University of Minnesota provides access to a huge collection of materials for use in Holocaust and genocide education. Besides Online Museum Exhibitions and Holocaust Memorials a section called Artistic Responses can be found. It presents artworks of over fifty artists.
For example information on the life and work of David Friedmann (student of Leo Kober, Hermann Struck as well as Lovis Corinth and one of the most famous press artists in the 1920s) is included.
He is cited as followed on the page: "I tried everything to make a living as a sign painter, as artist to sell pictures, and as a contractor again like in Berlin under the Nazi Regime. After Miriam was born, I had to work for three, harder than before and saw no future for us here in Israel. In 1951, I had a one-man show in Tel-Aviv with paintings of the concentration camps. I am sorry to say, the interest was only small and learned people did not want to talk about concentration camps. After I was retired in 1962, sometimes I had the idea to try again, but was afraid to start, had no courage and also in consideration of my wife Hilde. I had to lock my feelings in a kind of jail and close the door. So sometimes I went out, painted pictures from nature and worked on my book, later I went to the libraries to make sketches, also sketches in the streets, parks and alleys. In March 1963, I had a small exhibition in the Central Library, but it was not satisfying. I thought about the time between 1946 and 1948 when I was a successful artist. In December 1963, I had enough. I told myself that all the paintings on the wall mean nothing, they no longer satisfy me, anyone can paint like that. I have to do something that nobody can do in the same way. I opened the door of the jail and in the night quietly left our bedroom for my studio, placed a piece of paper on the easel, took charcoal and made my first sketch. Now I was free again and from that time on nobody was able to stop me. In the short time of only four and one-half months, twenty-eight new drawings were finished... Now I am satisfied, because what I am doing is not only for myself. I wish everyone had to take a good look at the artwork. They have to look at what persecution under the Nazi Regime was, and it can happen again, for in America to be a Nazi, to be a Communist is not prohibited. Against an evil world I will work further to try to put my feelings down on canvas or paper against anti-Semitism, against race hatred of all people." (source: CHGS)