October 30, 2002
Library of Congress American Folklife Center Acquires
Collection Documenting Pre-War Jewish Life in Eastern
Europe
The Library of Congress
announced today that its American Folklife Center has
acquired the Aaron Ziegelman Foundation Collection, a
large collection of rare photographs, motion pictures,
letters, maps and other materials that richly document
everyday life in the Jewish community of Luboml, Poland,
prior to its obliteration during World War II. The
collection was donated to the Library by Aaron
Ziegelman, of New York City, the creator of the
collection, who is the executive director of the
foundation.
The materials in the
collection provide a unique window onto the traditions
and other aspects of Jewish life in the market town or
"shtetl" of Luboml (Libivne in Yiddish). Luboml,
established in the 14th century, had one of the oldest
Jewish communities in Poland, and is representative of
other Eastern European shtetls. Located 200 miles
southeast of Warsaw, it is now part of Ukraine.
Materials in the collection document, for example, local
schools, businesses, recreational activities, religious
life, holidays, and weddings.
Aaron Ziegelman was
born in Luboml and left the community, with his mother
and sister, in 1938 and came to the United States, where
he became a successful businessman. To enrich his
memories of the vibrant community of his childhood and
share the story of Luboml's Jewish past, Ziegelman
organized a project to collect and preserve information
about Jewish life in Luboml obtained from survivors and
other sources, beginning in 1994. The creation of this
documentary collection led, in turn, to the development
of a major traveling exhibition titled "Remembering
Luboml: Images of a Jewish Community"; a book, "Luboml:
The Memorial Book of a Vanished Shtetl," and a recently
released documentary film, "Luboml: My Heart Remembers."
The Aaron Ziegelman
Foundation Collection will reside at the Archive of Folk
Culture, which is part of the Library of Congress's
American Folklife Center. "We are thrilled that Aaron
Ziegelman has donated this wonderful collection to the
Library of Congress," said Peggy A. Bulger, the center's
director. "It is an incredibly rich collection that will
permit researchers to better understand myriad aspects
of a Jewish community's culture as they existed before
World War II."
The American Folklife
Center was created by Congress in 1976 and placed in the
Library of Congress to "preserve and present folklife"
through programs of research, document-ation, archival
preservation, reference service, live performance,
exhibitions, and training. The Center includes the
Archive of Folk Culture, which was established in 1928
and is now one of the largest collections of
ethnographic material from the United States and around
the world.
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To view this release on the Library of Congress web site,
click here.