The first half of the event, “Remembering Resistance: The 1942 Tuczyn Ghetto Uprising,” emphasized the importance of remembrance as a central component of this day of observance by focusing on efforts not only to protect the history and memory of the Jewish community of Tuczyn, a village in western Ukraine, but also to create awareness about the history and experiences of the Jews during the Holocaust that still remain today virtually unknown. The event's participants discussed their work in addition to other collaborative endeavors to preserve the history of the Tuczyn Ghetto Uprising in ways that provided viewers a chance to understand the events that occurred from the benefit of different historical perspectives. If you missed this event, the recording can be viewed by clicking here.

Dr. Michael Emmett, member of the Ackerman Center’s Advisory Board, Chief of Internal Medicine at Baylor University Medical Center, Clinical Professor of Medicine at The University of Texas Southwestern and Texas A&M School of Medicine kicked off the day’s events by sharing his family’s experience in Tuczyn during the Holocaust.

Dr. Emmett began his story with an overview of the historical and social background of the Jewish community in Tuczyn. In 1941, the village had approximately 3,000 Jewish inhabitants, the majority of which were small-time merchants and laborers. In July of that year the Nazi occupation began, and the same day his mother and sister were savagely beaten by Nazi collaborators.

In September of 1942, the ghetto was sealed, and shortly thereafter the liquidation of its inhabitants commenced. The Tuczyn Ghetto Uprising began while Nazi and Ukrainian police forces stormed the streets and Jewish resistance fighters set fire to the ghetto in revolt and 1,500 to 2,000 Jews escaped and fled into the surrounding forest. The Uprising lasted for two days before organizers surrendered and were later executed. Over one-half of the escapees were eventually caught and killed.

Dr. Emmett shared an appalling incident that occurred during the Uprising that concerned the tragic fate of over 300 women with babies who had escaped into the nearby forest. The mothers soon came to the realization that they could not withstand the harsh living conditions and received word that the Nazis had promised that those who turned themselves in would be unharmed. All 300 women and their young children were murdered.

Dr. Emmett’s father, Isaak Emmett, managed to escape during the Tuczyn Ghetto Uprising fire and fled to the nearby town of Shubkiv, where his mother and sister later joined him and the three survived with the help of Pavel and Lyubov Gerasimchik, who at great personal risk hid the family in their barn for a year-and-a-half. Sadly, the majority of his family members were not as fortunate and were murdered in the Holocaust. When the Russian army liberated Tuczyn in January of 1944, only 20 remained in Tuczyn compared to the population of 3,000 in 1941.

Dr. Emmett discovered that his father had kept a diary during the war chronicling the events taking place in Tuczyn and the experiences of his family, and it was from these 43 loose handwritten pages of paper that he reconstructed this history and inspired further research. He concluded his presentation by emphasizing the importance of creating public awareness about experiences and histories, like those that occurred in Tuczyn and in other places in Ukraine that remain largely unknown and unacknowledged in Holocaust historiography.

Dr. Anne E. Parsons, Associate Professor and Director of Public History, UNC Greensboro discussed the original research that she has conducted on the Tuczyn Ghetto Uprising and shared details about her current collaborative work with JewishGen’s Yizkor Book Project.

Dr. Parsons explained the importance of having an understanding of the many ways that history is remembered. She emphasized that with the passing of the last survivors we have reached a crucial moment in the history of Holocaust education and research. She raised questions concerning some of the challenges facing new generations learning about the Shoah, highlighting language barriers and limited knowledge about the distant and unfamiliar locations where the events took place.

Dr. Parsons revealed that the inspiration for her research was generated by the stories that she had heard throughout her childhood about her grandparents who lived in Tuczyn. She was shocked to find that very little research had been conducted on the subject, which motivated her search. This initial lack of available information encouraged her to work to make materials more accessible to researchers worldwide.

She credited the website Yahad in Unum as an invaluable tool for personal and academic use as an online source for information and education on the subject. The site is a digital archive comprised of groundbreaking research conducted by Father Patrick Debois and his team of investigators, who have compiled extensive documentation on the mass shootings committed by the mobile killing squads throughout Eastern Europe during the Holocaust. Dr. Parsons gained access to oral testimonies, maps, photos, and other data related to Tuczyn, but admitted that there is still much that needs to be explored.

Dr. Parsons shared that during the course of her studies she discovered the existence of two editions of Tuczyn Yizkor Books from 1967 and 1990. These Yizkor books, or memory books, are comprised of data collected concerning the fate of specific Jewish communities during the Holocaust with the explicit aim to preserve the history and memory of the events that took place. This revelation provided the opportunity to partner with the JewishGen website, a virtual genealogical archive that has compiled extensive documentation regarding the fate of Jewish families and communities that were destroyed in the Holocaust. She described her ongoing collaborative work with JewishGen’s Tuczyn Yizkor Book Project, which to date has translated approximately 20 to 25% of the 1967 edition from Hebrew into English, thus making the books more accessible to both the public and academic researchers.

Dr. Parsons concluded by emphasizing the importance of Holocaust research and teaching and that we must continue working towards remembrance. She expressed the hope that creating awareness about what she called the “hidden histories” of the Holocaust, such as the events that took place in Tuczyn, will inspire and empower future researchers to explore these ‘new’ histories.

Nataliia Ivchyk, Chairperson of the Board of “Mnemonics,” and Associate Professor at the Department of Political Sciences at Rivne State Humanities University spoke about the work of the NGO Center for the Studies of Memory Policy and Public History “Mnemonics” in Rivne, Ukraine. NGO Mnemonics is a Ukrainian-based organization dedicated to promoting public education and commemoration of projects that serve to create awareness about the Holocaust in the Ukraine.

Ivchyk highlighted that NGO Mnemonics has led to the development of digital tools for research, as well as the creation of a virtual museum in Rivne in efforts to make historical resources available to the public for the study of the Holocaust. In 2020, NGO Mnemonics embarked on a collaborative project entitled “Counteracting Anti-Semitism and Xenophobia through the Popularization of the Multi-Ethnic Past of the Region," which endeavors to promote knowledge about the history of the Holocaust in Ukraine. Ivchyk announced that this cooperative venture led to the production of the groundbreaking documentary film Uprising of the Doomed (2021), which tells the heroic and tragic history of the Jewish victims of Tuczyn that were widely unknown by the public in Ukraine before this film. The film was shown during the live virtual commemoration event.

Maksym Gon, Director of the Center for Studies of Memory and Public History “Mnemonics” in Rivne, Ukraine, and Professor at the Department of World History at the Rivne State Humanities University explained that research on the history of the Holocaust in Ukraine began in the mid-80s, and while much has been discovered there is still so much more that remains to be explored. Gon revealed that much of the history and events that took place in Ukraine during the Holocaust, including the Tuczyn Ghetto Uprising, are widely unknown by the public.

Gon lauded the film as the first to openly address the scope and reality of Ukrainian collaboration in the Holocaust, which still remains a controversial and undiscussed subject of Ukrainian public memory. In addition to creating public awareness about the events that took place in Tuczyn during the Holocaust, the film also provides details concerning the Uprising that have never been available to the public until now.

Gon pointed out that the film provides a more comprehensive history of the Holocaust by bringing attention to these lesser-known experiences, which not only broadens our historiographical understanding of events but also fosters discussion about the traditional Holocaust narrative of experience that typically centers on camps such as Auschwitz.

Dr. Sarah Valente, Assisting Visiting Professor, launched the second half of the virtual Holocaust Remembrance Day Commemoration Events where she announced the premier of eleven new translations of Primo Levi’s 1946 poem “Shemá” that were created during the Ackerman Center’s Annual Translation Workshop held earlier this year. The translations were read aloud by faculty, students, and friends in multiple different languages including Italian, Russian, Arabic, Filipino, Kurdish, Farsi, Polish, German, French, and Portuguese. The English reading of the poem was accompanied by a powerful visual compilation created by Ackerman Center Research Assistant Katie Fisher.

Dr. Valente briefly outlined the life of Holocaust survivor Primo Levi and proclaimed “Shemá” as one of the most powerful works produced about the Shoah. She explained that in the poem Levi inverts the Shema prayer to serve as a warning to humanity that vigilance is the only way to avoid repeating the unimaginable depravity that occurred during the Holocaust.

The recording of this event, as well as translations from previous years' events, are available on our website.

Special guest speaker Lois Roman, the New York representative for the Memorial Scrolls Trust (MST), discussed the work of MST, a nonprofit organization with locations all over the globe dedicated to keeping and preserving Torah Scrolls that survived the Holocaust. Roman emphasized that the dawn of a new era has arrived in which the passing of Holocaust survivors raises many challenges concerning Holocaust remembrance. She pointed out that in many cases these Torah Scrolls are the only surviving remnants of thousands of Jewish communities that were completely decimated in the Shoah. These artifacts not only represent the absence of Jews but also serve as testimonies that attest to the murder of millions. Roman concluded by stressing that we must endeavor to preserve and honor the memory of the victims and survivors of the Shoah.

Dr. David Patterson, Hillel A. Feinberg Distinguished Chair in Holocaust Studies, concluded the commemoration event by speaking about the importance of Holocaust remembrance. Dr. Patterson emphasized that remembrance is not merely a recollection of events that transpired, but rather a day of bearing witness in which we preserve and honor the memory of those murdered. He stressed, that we must remember exactly what is at stake when we talk about the Holocaust, in essence, we are being summoned to witness, and as the receivers of this testimony, we are thus obligated to respond to the outcry of suffering. On this day, we are reminded of the infinite responsibility that has been entrusted to our care is to remember what is infinitely precious is exactly what was slated for annihilation in the Shoah

Each episode has corresponding primary source documents, which can be viewed by clicking on the episode names below:

Ackerman Center Podcast Episodes: Season 2:

Jan. 31: 1933 | The Reichstag Fire and the Enabling Act

March 14: 1934 | Hitler and Mussolini Meet in Venice

Mar. 24: 1935 | Nuremberg Laws

April 25: 1936 | The Olympics in Berlin

*May 30:1937 | The Pacific War: The Rape of Nanking
-and- 1938 | Eichmann and the “Office of Jewish Emigration”

All past and future episodes are available for streaming on the podcast's website and other streaming platforms.

*Note: the season finale on May 30th will have two episodes.