The Jewish communities were destroyed in the Holocaust, most of the last members of the community have already died, but there are some who still care about their memory.
A few years ago, they embarked on a long journey following the lost communities to document their story and make it part of the global knowledge base, as part of a competition to write entries on Wikipedia called "Wikistatel", which seeks to commemorate the lost and lost Jewish world.
The project began 5 years ago at the initiative of Dr. Tehila Hertz, a lecturer in the Department of Education at Herzog College, who sought to enrich the teaching tools of her students. , Sponsored by Herzog College.
Competition logo,
About 70 entries were written as part of the competition, and recently, after a long judging process and delays due to the corona, the winners of the 2007 competition were announced. Minsk.
Unlike other projects in the field of the Holocaust, these are not researchers in the field, but rather ordinary people.
Thus, Dr. Michael Luzovsky, a planetary scientist at Tel Aviv University, won third place, Daniel Levy, who wrote 14 entries in the competition, and Ofer Atzmon - an electronics engineer. Brahiv, Kishkaresh, Ohel, Postdobos, Kemecha, and Tiszalka, as a continuation of the creation of some 1,000 entries documenting the Jewish communities in Hungary.
Deportation of the Jews of Chernivtsi in the fall of 1941, Photo: Wikipedia / Yad Vashem Archive
On General Kaddish Day, the tenth of Tevet, we seek to understand what causes those men and women, young and old, religious and secular, to devote much time to writing values that deal with extinct communities.
The personal story of second-place winner Yanai Becker provides a behind-the-scenes look at the writing venture.
He is only 17 years old, a history buff studying in homeschooling, but the entry he wrote after a hundred hours of research and study seems like a thesis. Becker, who is referred to in Wikipedia as the original "cucumber conqueror," explains: "I am the grandson of a Holocaust survivor from the Chernivtsi community. I did not know my grandfather, since he died several years before I was born. I wanted to commemorate his memory, "Not only will I be rewarded on a personal level, but the readership will be exposed to this interesting and diverse community. Since I have been editing Wikipedia for several years, I decided it was time to write a comprehensive and original entry, one in which I can also commemorate my grandfather and community."
Becker devoted no less than one hundred hours (!) To writing the entry, including a preliminary reading of sources.
"I made time in the afternoon every day," he says modestly, "my knowledge of the subject stems from a lot of reading, because I am a history buff. At home I have several books on Romanian Jewry. My mother also asked me, at my request, a few more books from the university library. "I have read these books, as well as many sources that are accessible to the general public online, I have processed the material and written the entry."
Although in the long run there were also crises to criticize, especially when he was not sure the value would meet the criteria of quality he set for himself, the family encouraged him: "I was told that this value is much more important and significant in terms of matriculation in history, for which I prepared in those months."
Yanai Becker receives the award from Revital Poleg, CEO of Wikimedia Israel, and Rabbi Prof. Yehuda Brandes, President of Herzog College, at a ceremony held at Yad Vashem, Photo: Corvus, Wikipedia
About 70 writers from all sectors of Israeli society - ultra-Orthodox, religious and secular - who wrote about Jewish communities in Libya, Poland, Hungary, Tripoli and Greece competed, with the only thing uniting them, apart from the love of Wikipedia, is the way to preserve the memory of lost communities. .
"The Holocaust is an issue that establishes a common identity that crosses sectors and can connect Jews from all over the world," says Dr. Hertz, the competition's initiator.
"One of my students documented the story of a devastated community," says Hertz, "and to that end she spoke with her elderly neighbor who is probably the last surviving Jew from that community. Can die quietly, after he knows his story exists online. "
Deportation of Jews from the Jewish community in Plock, Poland, Photo: Photo Archive, Yad Vashem
Becker, who wrote about his grandfather's community and won the award, also encourages others to join the venture: Experience in a real-life task. "
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