The Girl in the Diary: Searching for Rywka from the Lodz Ghetto
October 25 – April 28, 2024
The Girl in the Diary: Searching for Rywka from the Lodz Ghetto (October 25 – April 28, 2024) comes to the Maltz Museum in Beachwood, Ohio from Galicia Jewish Museum in Kraków, Poland. In 1945, a diary was found in the ashes of a destroyed crematorium in the liberated Auschwitz-Birkenau Camp. It was written by a 14-year-old Jewish girl named Rywka Lipszyc and documented her life in the Łódz Ghetto between October 1943 and April 1944. Rywka’s diary told stories of a young girl who lost her siblings and parents, but never lost hope or her faith. Experts from her diary are supplemented with commentary from historians, doctors, psychologists, and rabbis, in this deeply moving exhibition that blends original artifacts and candid photographs of others’ lives in the ghetto to help audiences understand the experiences Rywka describes in her diary. There are no known photographs of Rywka. We do not know the color of her hair or eyes, the way she smiled or laughed. She exists for us only through the words in her diary. The Girl in the Diary is a tribute to the life of a child who will not be forgotten.
For more information on booking student or adult group tours, please contact tours@mmjh.org
