October 2021 NewsNet

Page 8

The Making of a Modern Digital Archive Julie Reines Chervinsky, Blavatnik Archive Foundation

In 2004, Len Blavatnik, the founder and chairman of Access Industries, was presented with the opportunity to acquire a collection of 10,000 postcards offering rare insights into various aspects of Jewish history and heritage. I joined the Blavatnik Family Foundation shortly thereafter, and I remember the first time I looked through the blue albums holding the future Judaica Postcards collection, mesmerized by the images and messages from places and people that are now long gone. Assembled over the course of decades by an anonymous postcard collector, these cards were neatly organized into geographic and subject categories. They hailed from Western, Central, and Eastern Europe, North America, North Africa, and Palestine, and “spoke” in different languages. Some portrayed scenes of daily life, offering photos and illustrations of synagogues, marketplaces, schools, and other community spaces. Others reflected more topical concerns, like holidays, contemporary personalities, or political and cultural events. Another subset dealt with the darker aspects of the Jewish experience, focusing on anti-Semitic tropes and depictions that circulated in the first half of the twentieth century. While I wasn’t able to decipher the handwritten messages, I was drawn to what seemed like a new way to engage with the past and get a glimpse into the thoughts, attitudes, and lived experience of the people exchanging these postcards decades—sometimes nearly a century—earlier.

scholars and the general public; and presenting these materials in a visually appealing format that encourages deeper appreciation and engagement. Soon, new collections were added that focused on areas of Jewish history, Russian and Soviet history, and overlapping topics within these fields. The Archive acquired a collection of wartime “triangle” letters sent by Soviet soldiers fighting on the front lines in World War II. Due to paper shortages, instead of being placed in an envelope, frontline letters were often folded into a triangle, with space for the recipient’s address on the outside of the triangle and the personal message inside. While looking through the collection, we noticed the names suggested that senders and recipients were Jewish. It was remarkable that these letters survived the brutal total war in Soviet territory, and while we had little hope of identifying and locating the writers, we wanted to learn more about the presence and roles of Jewish soldiers in the ranks of the Red Army. In order to add their stories to the more familiar narratives about the Jewish experience of World War II and the Holocaust, we launched a long-term project to record the testimonies of Jewish soldiers who had fought in the Soviet armed forces and partisan detachments. Between 2006 and 2014, we visited nearly 1,200 veterans in 78 cities across 11 countries, recorded over 1,500 hours of video testimonies,

This personal fascination was accompanied by the impression that the collection could be a treasure trove for researchers and students. While in the past postcards have been of interest primarily to collectors and dealers, there is now a growing interest in these objects as art pieces, popular culture artifacts, personal correspondence, and historical testimony. In 2005, when the Blavatnik Archive Foundation was created, these initial impressions formed the blueprint for our institutional focus: preserving materials that reflect the lived human experience MIL.00044: “Triangle letter sent by a soldier named Mikhail Mindlin to his wife in May 1944. of modern history; ensuring wide, Mikhail describes improvements in food availability, expresses his firm belief in the inevitaopen access to these materials for bility of victory, and asks about their daughter’s school grades.” October 2021 • NewsNet

TOC

8


Turn static files into dynamic content formats.

Create a flipbook
Issuu converts static files into: digital portfolios, online yearbooks, online catalogs, digital photo albums and more. Sign up and create your flipbook.
October 2021 NewsNet by ASEEES - Issuu