On January 27th, the Blavatnik Archive’s exhibition, Jewish Fighters in the Red Army: 1941-1945, will open to the public in the Center for Jewish History. Situated in the Center’s Great Hall, the exhibition will run until December 31, 2025. The exhibit is comprised of striking war-time portraits of Jewish veterans who fought in the Soviet army in World War II, and a rare selection from soldiers’ personal diaries. Recognizing that the stories of Jewish soldiers were mostly left out of the more familiar narratives about the Jewish experience of the war and the Holocaust, the Blavatnik Archive began to record and share their testimonies.
At 99, Anita Lasker-Wallfisch is the last surviving member of the Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz — her son tells her extraordinary story to the Financial Times. On January 27, the BBC will mark Holocaust Memorial Day and the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau with a wide range of programming, including the documentary, “The Last Musician of Auschwitz,” executive produced by Foundation Co-Chair Emily Blavatnik and Access Entertainment President Danny Cohen.
On the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, the Blavatnik Archive is opening an exhibit at Altneu Synagogue in New York City on Thursday, January 16, 2025. The Archive’s resident historian, Brandon Schechter, will present an introduction to the exhibit, which is comprised of a collection of photographs made after the liberation of the camp, and discuss the intent of their creators.
For the philanthropic family, which fled the USSR in 1978-1979, the topic is a personal matter, but Alex Blavatnik tells eJP that he hopes the story resonates further. The Blavatnik Family Foundation, joined by the Arcadia Fund and the David Berg Foundation, is working to change that, funding a new digital archive — Refuseniks & Activists — that is dedicated to the Soviet Jewry movement and the Refuseniks, those Soviet Jews whose applications for exit visas were refused and who were then forced into horrid conditions for the sins of being Jewish and Zionist.
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The Blavatnik Archive is a nonprofit foundation dedicated to preserving and disseminating materials that contribute to the study of 20th-century Jewish and world history, with a special emphasis on World War I, World War II, and Soviet Russia.
