7 June @ 8:00 pm – 9:00 pm
The Ghetto Fighters’ House invites you to a special Talking Memory programme marking the 80th anniversary of the “Zivia Conference” at Kibbutz Yagur: Testimony, Resistance, and Remembrance.
In June 1946, Zivia Lubetkin stood before the United Kibbutz Movement at Kibbutz Yagur and delivered her testimony. A leader of the Jewish underground in Nazi-occupied Warsaw and a central figure in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, Lubetkin gave voice to the destruction of Polish Jewry – the struggle for resistance, the human realities behind a history the world was only beginning to reckon with. Eighty years on, her words remain a document of extraordinary moral force.
This programme returns to that moment and to its enduring significance.
The programme opens with remarks from Yigal Cohen, CEO of the Ghetto Fighters’ House.
Prof. Lori Weintrob, Professor of History and Director of the Holocaust Center at Wagner College, will draw on three decades of scholarship to explore how Lubetkin and other women who shaped resistance have been taught – and, too often, overlooked. Her talk considers testimony as both historical record and moral legacy, and what it asks of educators, historians, and the broader public today.
Dr. Batya Brutin of Beit Berl Academic College and WHISC will examine how Lubetkin has been represented visually across the decades: in paintings, murals, stamps, and memorial works in Israel and Poland, sometimes beside her husband Yitzhak Zuckerman, sometimes as part of a collective, and sometimes alone. Across these varied depictions, a consistent portrait emerges – of determination, resilience, and inner strength to which artists across generations have returned.
Ruth Kupperberg of the NYC Commission on Human Rights and the Wagner College Holocaust Center will read from Lubetkin’s own testimony, bringing her voice directly into the room.
This event is presented in partnership with the Holocaust Center of Wagner College, WHISC (Women in the Holocaust International Study Center), Remember the Women Institute, Classrooms Without Borders, the Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre, and the Rabin Chair Forum at George Washington University.