File:1946 Kaplan.jpg

"Von der letzten Zerstörung. Die Zeitschrift ′Fun letstn churbn′ der Jüdischen Historischen Kommission in München 1946–1948." Ed. by Frank Beer and Markus Roth. Berlin: Metropol Verlag 2020.

Title

Fun letstn khurbn [From the Last Extermination]: Journal for the history of the Jewish people during the Nazi regime. Munich [Germany]: 1946-1948.

Abstract

"In December 1945 the "Central Committee for the Liberated Jews in Germany" (Tsentral komitet fun di bafrayte Yidn in der Amerikaner Zone) set up the Munich-based "Central Historical Commission" (Tsentral historishe komisye). Israel Kaplan, a teacher from Kovno, and Moshe Figenboim, an accountant, were appointed to head the Commission. Through their leadership (and much prodding), the Commission’s pool of employees and paid and unpaid volunteers collected 2,500 testimonies as well as 8,000 questionnaires filled out mainly in Yiddish, but also in Hebrew, Polish, Hungarian, and German ... With Hebrew-alphabet print sets and a printing machine, the Commission began publishing in 1946 a Yiddish-language journal entitled Fun letstn khurbn (From the Last Destruction). The journal’s primary purpose was to support documentation efforts by encouraging DPs to give testimony. ... For Israel Kaplan, the editor-in-chief of Fun letstn khurbn, children were a distinct group whose voice the world needed to hear. Under Kaplan’s guidance, the Historical Commission started a collection campaign in late 1946. Like the Historical Commission in Poland, the Munich commission developed special questionnaires and opened an essay contest for children writing about their Holocaust experiences. Starting with the second issue, Kaplan published a child’s testimony in each issue of Fun letstn khurbn ... The Commission was disbanded in 1948, and the materials it had gathered were transferred eventually to Yad Vashem."--Boaz Coen