YIVO Institute for Jewish Research Launches Lithuanian Translation of Online Museum Exhibition

(New York, NY) – The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research launched a Lithuanian translation of its award-winning Bruce and Francesca Cernia Slovin Online Museum’s inaugural exhibition, Beba Epstein: The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Girl.

The translation is a joint project between YIVO, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Lithuania, and the Consulate General of the Republic of Lithuania in New York. It went live on Wednesday, September 27, 2023, during the week of the 80th anniversary of the liquidation of the Vilna Ghetto.

Beba Epstein: The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Girl explores East European Jewish life in the 20th and 21st centuries through the true story of one teenage girl. The exhibition, developed by YIVO in consultation with scholars and Beba Epstein’s family, delivers an exciting leap forward for digital museums in an experiential format.

Karolina Ziulkoski, the museum’s Chief Curator and a Webby award-winning interactive designer, has combined innovative technology with first-rate storytelling to showcase rare materials from YIVO’s archive of twenty-four million documents and artifacts. The exhibition has won several honors and awards, including 2022 Anthem Awards Silver Winner, Vega Awards 2020 | Arcturus Winner, GLAMi Awards 2021 Finalist, and AAM Muse Awards 2021 Honorable Mention.

The translation into Lithuanian will allow the Lithuanian people, and Lithuanian students and teachers in particular, to access this unique and impactful resource for teaching Jewish history and Holocaust education.

“This project of translating the online museum, supported by the Lithuanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Lithuanian Consulate General in New York and YIVO, is more than just a local initiative. Rather, it marks a new chapter of engagement with Jewish history and the tragic history of the Holocaust in Lithuania. We at YIVO are very grateful for this forward looking and open approach on the part of the Lithuanian Government,” said Jonathan Brent CEO of YIVO.

“We are pleased and appreciate the cooperation with YIVO on Beba Epstein: The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Girl project. This virtual story about the daily life of a girl in Vilnius in the 1930s reveals not only dramatic historical events, but also allows us to know better the cultural and religious heritage of the Jews of that time, which can undoubtedly be considered a part of Lithuania’s identity. Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, this year celebrates 700th anniversary. At all times this city was a place where so many different nations and cultures met and lived together. The translation of the story into Lithuanian expands the possibilities of its publicity and will help to educate new generations of Lithuanians both in Lithuania and in the other countries in the spirit of humanism and mutual respect,” said the Consul general of Lithuania in New York Vaclovas Šalkauskas.

Beba Epstein’s autobiography, the centerpiece of the exhibition, was written when she was in fifth grade, before the start of World War II. It was discovered in May 2017 at the Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania among 170,000 pages of previously unknown YIVO materials thought to have been destroyed by the Nazis.

Additional materials available for viewers to explore in Beba Epstein: The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Girl include videos of Jewish family life in Eastern Europe in the early 20th century, several notebooks from Jewish schools including Beba’s primary school, and rare documents like the record book of the study house of the 18th Century Vilna Gaon, the most influential rabbi of his time.

Through Beba’s story, the audience learns about many aspects of Jewish life in Lithuania, and Eastern Europe more broadly, including family dynamics, the school system and curriculum, leisure activities, immigration, as well as antisemitism and the Holocaust.

The YIVO Bruce and Francesca Cernia Slovin Online Museum was established with a generous $3 million gift from Bruce Slovin in memory of his late wife Francesca Cernia Slovin for the purpose of telling the story of Jewish life in Eastern Europe and Russia through YIVO’s world-renowned archival and library collections. The YIVO Cernia Slovin Online Museum will launch its second exhibition in 2024.

The online museum is available free of charge to the global public at museum.yivo.org. The Lithuanian translation is available at https://museum.yivo.org/?lang=lt.

For any media inquiries please contact:

Shelly Freeman
Chief of Staff

YIVO

The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research is dedicated to the preservation and study of the history and culture of East European Jewry worldwide. For nearly a century, YIVO has pioneered new forms of Jewish scholarship, research, education, and cultural expression. Our public programs and exhibitions, as well as online and on-site courses, extend our outreach to a global community. The YIVO Archives contains 24 million unique items and YIVO’s Library has over 400,000 volumes—the single largest resource for the study of East European Jewish life in the world. yivo.org / yivo.org/the-whole-story