The Hong Kong Holocaust and Tolerance Centre presented a special lecture titled “Who Will Write our History?: Rediscovering a Hidden Archive from the Warsaw Ghetto” last week at the Hong Kong International Book Fair – a major event attended by roughly one million people annually. We are delighted that the talk attracted a diverse, standing room only crowd, emphasizing the value and importance of HKHTC’s core message of tolerance and non-discrimination.
The lecture was presented by HKHTC’s Executive Director Simon K. Li in Cantonese, enabling us to connect with hundreds of local community members, including many who learned about the Holocaust for the first time as a result of this event. Focus was on Samuel Kassow’s book Who Will Write our History?, which documents a secret archive created by historian Emanuel Ringelblum in the Warsaw Ghetto. During Ringelbaum’s internment, he established a scholarly organization to record the experiences of the ghetto’s inhabitants.
HKHTC is grateful to the Consulate of Israel in Hong Kong & Macau for arranging the talk. The book, which was adapted into a film directed by Roberta Grossman in 2018, will be screened at the Hong Kong Jewish Film Festival later this year. We will circulate screening details as they become available.