New Holocaust Exhibition makes Cleveland Premiere THE GIRL IN THE DIARY: SEARCHING FOR RYWKA FROM THE ŁÓDŹ GHETTO

Opening at the Maltz Museum in Beachwood October 2023

[CLEVELAND] – The Maltz Museum announces a new special exhibition making its Cleveland premiere in fall of 2023. The Girl in the Diary: Searching for Rywka from Lodz Ghetto tells the remarkable story of 1945, when a Soviet doctor found a school notebook in the liberated Auschwitz-Birkenau Camp that had been written by a teenager named Rywka Lipszyc during her incarceration in the Lodz Ghetto from October 1943 to April 1944. It is the testament of a Jewish girl who lost her siblings and parents, but never lost hope despite moments of doubt. Through excerpts from the diary, expert commentary, photos, multimedia, and historical artifacts, the exhibition allows visitors to briefly walk the streets of the Lodz ghetto and get to know one of its residents, Rywka Lipszyc. For more information, ticket pricing, and group tour discounts, visit www.maltzmuseum.org or call 216-593-0575.

The Girl in the Diary special exhibition was developed by The Galicia Museum in Poland. “Working on this exhibition we never found a photograph of Rywka Lipszyc. Despite this, the exhibition has a very strong visual photographic component. As there are vast archives of the photographs documenting the daily life and struggle in the Lodz Ghetto, designing the exhibition we utilized a number of photographs made by the three most known photographers working there. I like to think that somewhere in those photographs or in one of the thousands of other archival pictures taken in the Lodz Ghetto there is Rywka smiling at us, only we do not know this yet,” said Curator Tomasz Strug.

The archival photographs illustrating the story of Rywka Lipszyc are the work of the three most famous photographers of the Lodz Ghetto: Henryk Ross, Mendel Grossman, and Walter Genewein, who preserved the realities of ghetto life on color slides. Stored in closed containers, underground, in hiding, many have su ered partial damage. They present only part of the picture captured on the slide. They are fragmentary, just like the whole story of Rywka, which — like these negatives — had to wait many years to be brought to light.

Jakub Nowakowski, former Director of the Galicia Jewish Museum, said, “The unchained voice of this orthodox Jewish girl reaching us so many years after the Holocaust, her unshakable faith and devotion, but also restless e orts of the countless people from various continents to identify the author of texts and finally, the mystery surrounding her fate - this was all material for a fascinating and thought-provoking exhibition. We knew it right away.”

Unique historical artifacts and documents from museums in Poland, Israel, Germany, Belgium, and the United States combine to tell the story of The Girl in the Diary, which is mainly, but not exclusively, the story of women.

Most of the wartime narratives and memories of the German occupation concentrate of the fate of men — soldiers, politicians, leaders. In Rywka’s world, the perspective is the opposite. Men appear in the diary, but remain in the shadows, in the background. They are present, but not dominant. The world we get to know from Rywka’s diary is populated by women and its structure is created by relations between them. It is filled with their pain and longing, their courage and daily battles, their fear.

The exhibition concentrates on this aspect, bringing visitors into the world of the women Rywka describes in her diary. In order to not interfere with this unique narrative, all the commentaries used to supplement the text of the diary were also prepared by women. The idea for commentaries strongly refers to the Jewish tradition of explaining and interpreting sacred texts. In this symbolic way, the exhibition refers to Rywka’s devotion to the tradition in which she grew up, to her unwavering faith in God and God’s care.

The Girl in the Diary: Searching for Rywka from Lodz Ghetto will be on view October 25, 2023 – April 28, 2024 at the Maltz Museum (2929 Richmond Road, Beachwood; 216-593-0575; www.maltzmuseum.org).

About the Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage: Located approximately twenty minutes from downtown Cleveland in the suburb of Beachwood, the Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage is housed in an award-winning building crafted from Jerusalem stone, uniquely set into its landscape. O ering two permanent collections plus a gallery dedicated to presenting world-class special exhibitions, the Maltz Museum is rooted in the Jewish value of respect for all humanity, telling universal stories of hope and resilience to educate and inspire a more just, civil, and inclusive society.