 Yaffa Eliach is a pioneering scholar in Holocaust studies and the founder of the first Center for Holocaust Documentation and Research in the United States . She has introduced new concepts in Holocaust documentation, both written and visual. Ms. Eliach is best known for the 1,600 photographs that make up the " Tower of Life " she created at the US Holocaust Museum in Washington , D.C. In this soaring, three-story space, these photographs from the shtetl of Eishyshok constitute the most moving exhibit in the museum and give face to a murdered people, documenting the 900-year history of the shtetl and serving as a tribute and definitive portrait of a people and a vanished culture. We see the people of Eishyshok at their weddings and bar mitzvahs, their social clubs and literary gatherings, their winter sports and summer camps. In her book, There Once Was a World, Eliach movingly records the history of that people. Nineteen years of scholarship have yielded what is perhaps the richest, most detailed portrait of Eastern European Jewish life that we will ever have, a book that encompasses both the sweep of history and an intimate view of the day-to-day lives of generations of small-town Jews, in all their uniqueness and universality. Her research took her from family attics on six continents to state archives no scholar had seen since the start of the Cold War. In this book, as in her Tower, Eliach has sought to emphasize life over death. Eliach's own roots in Eishyshok, as a descendant of one of the five founding families and herself one of only twenty-nine survivors, give her work an unrivaled depth and passion. Professor Eliach's newest project is building in Rishon Le-Zion , Israel a full-size replica of a shtetl (a small Jewish town). A recreation of a vanished past, in which East European Jewish life and culture flourished, it is an enterprise unmatched in magnitude by any other venture in the field of ethnic studies. People feel that the open-air shtetl Museum will be a major historical center and a tourist attraction in Israel.The Shtetl Foundation was established in the closing days of 1999, and Prof. Yaffa Eliach is its President and Founder.
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