14 August 2020

A unique document of the National Library of Lithuania – at the center of the YIVO New York exciting new project

The National Library of Lithuania congratulates its partner, the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, upon the landmark event: the launching the first exhibition of its YIVO Bruce and Francesca Cernia Slovin Online Museum:  Beba Epstein: The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Girl.

The exhibition is based on the handwritten autobiography of Beba Epstein that was discovered in May 2017 at the National Library of Lithuania among about 170,000 pages of materials thought to have been destroyed by the Nazis. The documents form a central part of the Judaica Collection of the National Library.

The exhibition explores East European Jewish life in the 20th and 21st centuries through the true story of one teenage girl and was developed to serve a general audience. Her ordinary and extraordinary life touches on many significant world events at the time. The exhibition serves as an excellent resource to learn about the Jewish experience in Eastern Europe pre-Holocaust as well as the Holocaust and its aftermath tackling universal themes of racism and discrimination. 

The exhibition that includes several more items from the National Library of Lithuania is available at https://museum.yivo.org/.