Dr. Anat Livne, Director of the Ghetto Fighters' Museum (GFM) in Western Galilee, Israel, Ms. Raya Kalisman, Director of GFM External Relations and of the Center for Humanistic Education at GFM and Ms. Orna Alroy, Director of the American Friends of GFM will present the Ghetto Fighters' Museum’s Vision, Goals and Mission, on Sunday, February 12th, 2012, at 2 pm.  The event will be held at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco.  Space in the meeting room is limited, reservations are required, please RSVP at your earliest convenience (see below for details of how to do so)

The presentation will include:

          - An introduction to the Ghetto Fighters' Museum;

          - A short film about the Museum; 

          - Surviving artifacts from the Holocaust, illustrative of the GFM's permanent collections; and

          - A talk on the topic of: “It’s Now Our Turn: How Do the ‘Generations After’ Convey the Story?”

RSVP by February 09, 2012 to lizjohnjohn@aol.com. The event is free, but space is limited and reservations are required, so please RSVP at your earliest convenience.  
 

Ghetto Fighters Museum

The Ghetto Fighters' Museum in the Western Galilee is a rare tribute to the ability to create something eternal and optimistic on the ashes of despair. Its home, Kibbutz Lohamei HaGhettaot (Ghetto Fighters Kibbutz) was founded in 1949 by Holocaust survivors, members of the Jewish underground in the ghettos of Poland, and veterans of partisan units. When laying the foundations for their new kibbutz home they vowed to build "a house, not a museum or a monument, that would be dedicated to preserving the history as a continuum between past and present, to heal the rift between the pioneering that faces forward and the memory that looks back – and above all, to emphasize the vital connection between the personal story and that of the group." While looking forward to creating new lives for themselves, they desired to memorialize their families and friends and find a way to provide optimism and hope for future generations.
 

The Ghetto Fighters’ Museum is a dynamic source of authentic testimonies and personal viewpoints. It differs from other museums and archives that deal with the Holocaust in that it is based on an encounter – personal, subjective, intimate, emotional, and as much as possible, unmediated.
 

The Ghetto Fighters' Museum educates towards the values that the ghetto survivors and partisans exemplified – mutual support, human decency, determination, and a willingness to fight for one's beliefs. From the roof of the main museum one has a view of the entire Western Galilee – "This is our answer," a member says, "We have created a homeland, a new life, children and grandchildren. With optimism, hard work and education, we have overcome" 
 

The Ghetto Fighters' Museum receives over 110,000 visitors annually. Its sections including the main Museum, a Children's Museum, Library, Archives, the Center for Humanistic Education, Education Department and Pedagogical Center serve as a testimony to the human spirit in times of adversity. Tours are arranged for groups and are offered in seven languages.
 

Guests to the GFM in 2010 included MK Yitzhak Herzog (former Minister of Welfare and Social Services), MK Shalom Simchon (Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development), Rabbi Daniel Hershkowitz (Minister of Science), Gideon Saar (Minister of Education), and the former ministers, Rafi Eitan and Moshe Arens.
 

The ambassadors of Austria, the United Kingdom (the past and present ambassadors), Poland and France also visited the museum in 2010.
 

"We thought that the Holocaust and Jewish Resistance should be studied, that lessons could be learned from both. So we established this house that would tell the younger generations and those who would come after us, what happened and how it happened, and how we must continue to live" Yitzhak "Antek" Zuckerman, in an audio-taped interview, April 1970.

Co-sponsored by the Israel Center of the Jewish Community Federation