JGSLA 2010: Conference makes NBC news!!!

JGSLA 2010 made NBC News Los Angeles' around town event page.

Read all about it here - as if Tracing the Tribe's readers didn't already know that more than 1,000 researchers and experts from around the world will be meeting from Sunday, July 11-Friday, July 16, at the JW Marriott at L.A. Live, in downtown Los Angeles.

The NBC conference story covers the event's attraction for local Jewish families to research their backgrounds and emphasizes that Sunday is targeted to those just beginning the quest for family with how-to sessions, workshops, a Market Square, Klezmer concerts and much more.

The Market Square Fair on Sunday will include craft displays and demonstrations, a daylong film festival and more.

For all conference information and to see the program online, click here.

An opening day (Sunday) pass is $105, and $85 daily for the balance of the conference. Tickets are available online.

See you at the conference!

New York: Throw the first pitch!

Take me out to the ballgame. Buy me some peanuts and crackerjacks. Throw the first pitch for the New York Mets vs St. Louis Cardinals game on Wednesday, July 28.

The US Holocaust Museum's New York Next Generation Board thought up a great fundraiser.

For a minimum donation to the USHMM of $20,000, you can throw the first pitch at the game, set for 6pm at Citi Field. This chance of a lifetime is courtesy of the New York Mets.

The winner of this honor will be joined on the mound by a New York–area World War II veteran who helped defeat Nazi Germany and liberate Holocaust survivors, and will also be invited to a special private-suite Museum event commemorating the 65th anniversary of the liberation of the camps.

How to keep your eye on the ball:

The highest pledge received by Friday, July 23, gets the honor of the pitch and also of supporting the USHMM's efforts to promote human dignity, confront hatred and prevent genocide.

Interested? Learn more by contacting Jana Neil in the USHMM's northeast regional office.

May is Jewish Heritage Month

Since 2006, May has been American Jewish Heritage Month, recognizing more than 350 years of Jewish contributions to American culture.

The Library of Congress offers a portal for activities and events surrounding this celebration.

Partners in this collaborative effort are The Library of Congress, National Archives and Records Administration, National Endowment for the Humanities, National Gallery of Art, National Park Service, and the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Click here for related exhibits and collection links.

Events  include:

May 4-26
First Person: Conversations with Holocaust Survivors
1pm, Tuesdays/Wednesdays, USHMM.

May 5
Keynote Address: Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) delivers the keynote address for the LOC’s celebration of Jewish American Heritage Month. LOC.

May 6
Lecture: “American Jews and the Myth of Silence after the Holocaust” 2010 Monna and Otto Weinman Annual Lecture. USHMM.

May 10
Book Talk: Author Robin Gerber, “Barbie and Ruth: The Story of the World's Most Famous Doll and the Woman Who Created Her.” LOC.

May 13
Lecture: "Child’s Play: The Judaization of Adolescence in 20th-Century America," by Jenna Weissman Joselit (Charles E. Smith Professor of Judaic Studies; George Washington University; former Distinguished Visiting Scholar, John W. Kluge Center, LOC), LOC.

May 14
Conversation: with Holocaust survivor Charles Stein, USHMM.

Other exhibits:

-- A Forgotten Suitcase: The Mantello Rescue Mission (USHMM). The story of George Mandel, a Hungarian Jewish businessman who befriended a Salvadoran diplomat, Colonel José Arturo Castellanos, in the years leading up to World War II. After Castellanos was named El Salvador’s Consul General in Geneva, he appointed Mandel, who had assumed a Spanish-sounding version of his last name, “Mantello,” to serve as the Consulate’s first secretary. Learn about this little-known story.

-- Jews in America (National Endowment for the Humanities)

-- Jewish Veterans of World War II

See the websites of the partner organizations for more events.

USHMM: Soviet Jewish officers and Germany, March 18

"Jewish Revenge? Soviet Jewish Officers' Encounters with Germany, 1945" is the 2010 Ina Levine lecture at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum on Thursday, March 18, in Washington DC.

It starts at 7pm in the Helena Rubinstein Auditorium, 100 Raoul Wallenberg Place SW.

Professor Oleg Budnitskii will present his work on Soviet Jewish identity through the lens of the Soviet Jewish military experience of World War II.

In Moscow, Budnitskii is: Senior research fellow, Institute of Russian History, Russian Academy of Sciences; academic director, International Center for Russian and Eastern European Jewish Studies: and professor of history, Department of Jewish Studies, Institute of Asian and African Studies, Moscow State University.

The author of numerous works, he most recently published (2008) Den'gi russkoi emigratsii: Kolchakovskoe zoloto, 1918-1957 (Money of the Russian Emigration: Kolchak's Gold, 1918-1957) and (2005) Rossiiskie evrei mezhdy krasnymi i belymi, 1917-1920 (Russian Jews between the Reds and the Whites, 1917-1920) of which an English translation is being published by the University of Pennsylvania Press.

For more information or to register, click here. To learn about past presentations and hear recordings, click here.

Bad Arolsen: Post-war digitization complete

The International Tracing Service (ITS) in Bad Arolsen, Germany has completed the digitizing of documents on displaced persons and emigration after WWII.

See the press release at International Tracing Service (ITS).

“This part of the ITS archives has hardly been explored so far,” said Udo Jost, Head of the Archive Division. “It offers excellent insights into life after survival, as well as the wave of migration which resulted from the war.”

This week, ITS forwarded copies of the documents to its partner organisations in Israel, the US, Poland, Luxembourg and Belgium.

The documents provide information on the fate of those who were rescued from concentration camps, forced labour and, in some cases, war captivity. This inventory specifically comprises documents from German, Austrian, Italian and British camps for displaced persons, as well as emigration lists, files and dossiers from refugee organisations such as the UNHCR, and lists of Holocaust survivors compiled by Jewish organisations.

Among the preserved DP camp documents are 350,000 CM1 questionnaires issued by the Allies. The forms documented what the people had experienced and the reasons for their desire to emigrate.

The digitization of the entire inventory of post-war documents took 18 months and can be viewed and searched on-site in Bad Arolsen.

This week, ITS forwarded copies of some.3 million images of documents from refugee organisations and Austrian, Italian and British DP Camps to Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, the US Holocaust Memorial Museum (Washington, DC), the Institute of National Remembrance (Warsaw), the Documentation and Research Centre on the Resistance (Luxembourg) and the National Archives of Belgium (Brussels).

For more information, click here.

USHMM: June workshop, Sephardic Jewry and the Holocaust

A June 2010 workshop on Sephardic Jewry and the Holocaust will take place at the USHMM in Washington, DC. The application deadline is November 23 (see below).

It is sponsored by the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies (CAHS) of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) which is seeking applications for the workshop, planned for June 16-25, 2010 at the USHMM. Up to 14 applicants will be accepted.

It will be led by two leading scholars in the field, Aron Rodrigue and Daniel Schroeter. There are two parts, seminar and research.

The seminar will address interdisciplinary issues, such as Ladino language and Sephardic identity; the Sephardic experience in ghettos, camps, and transports; resistance and rescue; and the experience of North African Jews before and during the war. Geographic areas are Southeastern Europe (Balkans, Bulgaria, Greece) and North Africa (Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, and Morocco).

The research section will consist of orientation, exposure, and guided research in the Museum's extensive archival and other collections concerning North Africa, Croatia, Greece, Serbia, the Jewish community of Monastir, newly acquired collections in Ladino and Judeo-Arabic, and selected collections of Sephardic-survivor oral testimonies and Sephardic music.

The goals are to acquaint emerging scholars with the breadth of this rich and diverse subject matter; expose them to new scholarly research on Sephardic Studies and the Holocaust; and provide them with the background knowledge, archival resources, and scholarly networking necessary to initiate or continue work in this underrepresented area.

USHMM will accept up to 14 scholars from among advanced graduate students, doctoral candidates, post-doctoral scholars, and early career academics who are currently conducting or considering research on Sephardic Jewish Studies, Holocaust Studies in Sephardic countries or communities, or area studies in countries in which Sephardic Jews resided.

Candidates must be affiliated with an accredited, degree-awarding institution (baccalaureate, the equivalent, or higher) in North America.

Applications, which must be submitted electronically (or postmarked) in English by November 23, include a current CV, a statement on the scholar's interest and background, a supporting letter from an advisor, department chair or dean. Non-local attendees receive lodging for the workshop and $1,000 towards travel and incidental expenses. Local attendees receive $200 for the two weeks.

Questions? Contact Dr. Leah Wolfson, or view the USHMM site for more information.

Footnote.com: BusinessWeek spotlight

Genealogists and family historians know that genealogy is big business. We know what it costs us personally to pursue our passion - multiply that by thousands and hundreds of thousands of ancestry-oriented researchers!

It is obvious that the major release of Footnote.com's Holocaust Collection was the impetus for Business Week's recent story in its Tech Beat column. Tracing the Tribe noted previously that the new release is accessible (at no charge) during October.

The Library of Congress has been aggressive in getting its assets online. Now the National Archives & Records Administration has partnerships with Google, Ancestry.com, and Footnote.com to create and make available a growing part of its vast collection.

The most recent fruit of these efforts: A large collection of holocaust-related documents just made available through Footnote. Full access to Footnote’s data normally costs $11.95 a month or $79.95 a year, but the Holocaust collection is free for the month of October.

The magazine noted that this Footnote release is - after Bad Arolsen and Yad Vashem - the world's third most significant collection of this period. Previously, the only way to access the records (from NARA and the US Holocaust Memorial Museum) was via a personal visit to NARA sites.

The article also mentions the Ardelia Hall component, which deals with Nazi looting of art and cultural treasures, as compiled by the US State Dept. Other elements include war crimes transcripts, concentration camp registers and more. Footnote offers researchers the ability to annotate items, add stories or photos.

Footnote.com's partnership with NARA means that fragile documents are now not only protected, provides expanded public global access and - most importantly - are now searchable.

The story did say that it was unfortunate that beginning in November, viewers will have to pay to see the images. NARA's partnerships fund digitization projects which preserve records and offer global access. There is a cost to that technology, but NARA - and the public, I think - understand that the ability to share and access important resources, while protecting them for future generations, is also valuable.

For researchers based around the world, online document images are valuable. An on site personal visit to look at these documents costs much more than a subscription to Footnote.com, and anyone with a computer connection can access and search the collections.

USHMM: Holocaust conferences planned

The Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum has announced several conferences and calls for papers.

Lessons and Legacies XI will take place at Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, Florida. The proposal deadline (for panels, papers and workshops) is October 31, 2009 and the conference is set for November 4-7, 2010.

The conference is sponsored by the Holocaust Educational Foundation and FAU. Programming includes up to three roundtables, up to 18 panels and up to 14 workshops relating to recent issues and advances in scholarship on all aspects of Holocaust Studies and for further research.

Send proposals for panels and individual papers to both program co-chairs, University of Vermont Professor Frank Nicosia and Dartmouth College Professor Susannah Heschel. Include a title, brief description of the panel as a whole, with names, institutional affiliations, contact information, paper titles and abstracts of all panelists. Applicants will be informed by January 31, 2010. Workshop proposals go to USHMM CAHS Dr. Suzanne Brown-Fleming, Denison University Professor Donald Schilling and Hillary Earl.

For more information, go to the Holocaust Education Foundation.

Bearing Witness: Memory, Representation, and Pedagogy in the Post-Holocaust Age will be held at Shenandoah University, Winchester, Virginia. The proposal deadline is October 30, 2009, and the conference will take place April 12-13, 2010.

It will bring together scholars, teachers, students, and community members to explore: (1) how the study of the Holocaust will change without the benefit of eyewitnesses; (2) how literature, film, theater, and music can be used as interpretive voices of memory and teaching tools; (3) how teachers, scholars, and students can preserve and interpret memory responsibly, as the Holocaust becomes a more distant historical event and in the face of persistent Holocaust denial; (4) how Christian and Jewish responses and theologies frame, remember, and respond to this genocide; and (5) how memory of the Holocaust can affect action to halt genocide.

Papers on these subjects are welcome: Teaching the Holocaust through Literature and Film: Sources, Challenges, and Scholarship; The Future of Memory: Defining, Teaching, and Analyzing Testimony; Memory and Faith: Christian and Jewish encounters with the Holocaust; or Engaging Student Activism: How Holocaust Memory Can Affect Actions to Halt Genocide.

Send a 1-2 page double-spaced abstract and CV to Assistant Professor Petra Schweitzer.

Conference on Genocide and Human Experience: Raphael Lemkin's Thought and Vision will be held at the Center for Jewish History, New York City, on Sunday, November 15, 2009.

An international group of historians, political scientists, anthropologists, legal authorities, philosophers, and policy-makers will gather at the Center for Jewish History in New York City to focus a lens on genocide through an exclusive examination of the writings of Raphael Lemkin, author of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

The conference will explore the intersection of historical documentation and contemporary interpretation, and to investigate the efforts of new generations of scholars, human rights advocates and activists to address, prevent and deal with the aftermath of genocide.

See the program and participating scholars here.

The Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, Inc. (Claims Conference) is offering fellowships for PhD candidates in advanced Shoah studies. the application deadline is January 25, 2010.

The mission is to support advanced study of the fate of Jews who were systematically targeted for destruction or persecution by the Nazis and their allies between 1933 and 1945. Studies can include the immediate historical context in which the Shoah took place; political, economic, legal, religious and socio-cultural aspects; ethical and moral implications. The Fellowship program also supports awardees in learning languages of Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union which are necessary for the study of Shoah related documents. Fellowships are awarded to outstanding candidates who have a strong personal commitment to Shoah memory, who have demonstrated excellence in academic achievement, and who possess the potential to provide outstanding professional leadership that will shape the future of Shoah awareness and scholarship.

Click here for more information.

Let others know about these events.

USHMM: July-August 2009

The US Holocaust Memorial Museum (Washington, DC) has announced its July-August programs.

North Africa and its Jews in WWII: 2-4pm, Friday, July 24

The Center's Summer Research Workshop Program culminates in a public presentation of participants' work. This program will examine the experiences of North African Jewry with especial focus on Nazi, Vichy, Spanish fascist, and local policymakers; anti-Jewish legislation and property confiscation and its implementation and effects on the ground; Muslim-Jewish relations; and Jewish cultural life. Participants also assess postwar historiography and memorialization of Jewish experiences in North Africa during the Holocaust.

Topics include are "Implementation of Anti-Jewish Legislation in Morocco at the Local and Metropolitan Levels," "Saharan Jews under Vichy: A Historical Assessment," "The Final Solution in North Africa, 1942-43: An Analysis of the Failed German Project to Annihilate North African Jewry," "The Memorial to the Victims in Borgel Jewish Cemetery," "Aryanization" of Jewish Property in North Africa during the War," "The Detained of Hammamet during the War, 1942–43,"Moncef Bey and the Tunisian Jewish Community in the Context of the Political Tradition of the Tunisian Beys," "Morocco during World War II: The Dynamics of Historical Memory and Jewish-Muslim Relations," "Inventing the Ideal Mother and the Perfect Home: Jewish Women in Tunis, 1933-1943," "The Franco Regime and the Jews of North Africa, 1939-1945," "Stages in the Historiography of the Second World War in North Africa," "Information and Research on North African Jewry during World War II," "Between Mendoub and Khalifa: Tangier's Jews."

Bringing the Past into the Present: Missing Narratives of the Holocaust in Ukraine: 2-4pm, Friday, July 31

Workshop participants explore the experiences of Jews and Ukrainians during World War II and the Holocaust, with especial focus on Ukrainian forced laborers; the Lvov ghetto; the Janowska camp; and postwar historiography, collective memory, and contemporary treatment and presentation of this history in Ukraine.

Topics include "Ukrainian Forced Laborers in Austria: The Pain of Memory," "Histories in Discord: Stalinist and Nazi Terror in Ukrainian Historical Culture," "Narratives and Identities in Western Ukraine, 1940-2008,"As in the old days in Shanghai: Propaganda and Forced Recruitment of 'Eastern Workers' for the War Economy of the Third Reich," "Women of the Underground: Female Roles in the OUN and UPA," "Testimonies of Holocaust Perpetrators in Ukraine," "Eyewitness to an Occupation: Collaboration and the Holocaust in Olevs'k, Zhytomyr Region," and "Missing Jewish Narratives in the Publicly Presented Past: An Invisible Tragedy in Lviv."

Exploring the Newly Opened ITS Archive at the USHMM: 2-4pm, Friday, August 14

Drawing on their previous research, participants work in interdisciplinary groups to explore how the Museum's collection of digitized documents from the ITS can inform the study of foreign, forced, and slave labor in the Third Reich and in its occupied and allied territories. More than a dozen scholars will speak.

For more information, see the USHMM site.

Workshop: Sephardim in the Holocaust, June 2010:

Now's the time to start thinking about applying for the 2010 Summer Research Workshop on Sephardim in the Holocaust, under the auspices of the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies (CAHS) at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM).

Sephardic Jewry and the Holocaust will run from June 16-25, 2010, and aims to acquaint emerging scholars with the breadth of this rich and diverse subject matter; expose them to new scholarly research on Sephardic Studies and the Holocaust; and provide them with background knowledge, archival resources, and scholarly networking necessary to initiate or continue work in this underrepresented area.

Those eligible include graduate students and others.

The workshop will be led by two leading scholars in the field, Aron Rodrigue and Daniel Schroeter.

Professor Rodrigue is the Eva Chernov Lokey Professor in Jewish Studies and Professor of History at Stanford University, and Director of the Stanford Humanities Center.He has written extensively on the history and culture of Sephardic Jews, Modern Jewish History, Jews of Modern France, minority identities, and the Ottoman Empire.

Professor Schroeter holds the Amos S. Deinard Memorial Chair in Jewish History at the University of Minnesota. His work focuses on the history and culture of Jews in Northern Africa and the Muslim Mediterranean.

The workshop includes seminar and research components. The seminar will address broader issues from an interdisciplinary perspective, such as Ladino language and Sephardic identity; the Sephardic experience in ghettos, camps, and transports; resistance and rescue; and the experience of North African Jews both before and during the war.

Participants will be exposed to broad subject matter to both Sephardic life and culture before the war, and the Sephardic experience during the Holocaust. Regions include Southeastern Europe(Balkans, Bulgaria, Greece) and North Africa (Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, and Morocco).

The research portion includes orientation, exposure and guided research in the Museum's extensive archival and other collections.

The Museum has significant holdings concerning North Africa, Croatia, Greece, Serbia, the Jewish community of Monastir, as well as newly acquired collections in Ladino and Judeo-Arabic, and selected collections of Sephardic-survivor oral testimonies and Sephardic music. The workshop will also provide specific presentations on selected topics of interest to the field.

Applications are sought from advanced graduate students, doctoral candidates, post-doctoral scholars and early career academics who are either conducting or considering research on Sephardic Jewish Studies, Holocaust Studies in Sephardic countries or communities, or area studies in countries in which Sephardic Jews resided. All disciplines are encouraged to apply.

Candidates must be affiliated with an accredited, degree-awarding institution (baccalaureate, the equivalent, or higher) in North America.

A maximum of 14 scholars will be selected.

For more detailed information, including housing, stipends,etc., send an email, or to Dr. Leah Wolfson. The application deadline is November 23 and applicants will be notified by January 18, 2010.

Philly 2009: Holocaust databases available

The Resource Room at the Philly 2009 conference will feature two special databases from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum (Washington, DC), according to the Resource Room database manager Jan Meisels Allen.

Megan Lewis of the USHMM will bring The Registry of Holocaust Survivors and the Name Search.

The Registry is a copy of the public version and includes photographs - it will be placed on all 28 computers.

Due to the stringent network security requirements of the USHMM, The Name Search database will not be on the 28 computers. However, Megan and her colleague Jo-Ellen Decker will have Name Search on their personal laptops. They will be available according to a schedule to be announced at the conference.

The Name Search has about 5 million names. There are duplicates because of the sources used to compile the list.

Not in the Resource Room: Neither the ITS database nor the Residenten Liste may be taken out of the USHMM or linked electronically to there.

There will be several programs at the conference related to these records. Peter Lande and Megan will speak on the USHMM archival collections other than ITS. Megan and Jo-Ellyn will be the Breakfast Experts one morning on the ITS records.

Check the online program at the conference site.

National Jewish Museum: Anti-semitism exhibit

Pertinent to the fatal shooting at the US Memorial Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC - perpetrated by a known anti-Semite and White supremacist - the e-letter of the National Museum of American Jewish History (Philadelphia) offered a relevant article on its current exhibit.

The NMAJH's current exhibit - Shaping Space, Making Meaning - asks visitors if anti-Semitism exists in American Society. This hotly debated question and others like it are at the root of the exhibit.

The museum's e-newsletter says "Absolutely!"

"Growing up in Long Island N.Y. we were oblivious to it, but when I lived in Stockton, Calif. in the late 70s there were 300 Jewish families in a city of 100,000," wrote a recent Museum visitor from Merrick, N.Y., in response to the question, "Does antisemitism exist in the United States?" asked in the Museum's exhibition.

The visitor added that people made ignorant and stereotypical comments toward him, and that he believes he was held back from advancing at work because of his Judaism.

Another visitor from Bellbrook, Ohio disagreed, saying that there is no more antisemitism than any other prejudice. "I can't honestly say I've suffered any outright loss from antisemitism."

The exhibit provides a demonstration on how a museum creates a major exhibit and also allows visitors to offer interactive feedback.

Other features include touch screens for visitors to chime in on the NMAJH's major themes of freedom, immigration, and religious tolerance, along with a short quiz to help the Museum learn about visitors' knowledge of American Jewish history.

The museum is scheduled to open in 2010, and the design team is creating a 22,000-square-foot exhibit now under construction.

US: Nazi war criminal files to be made public

The US Justice Department will make public 30 years of US court decisions against Nazi war criminals, according to Yad Vashem, as reported in the December 16 Jerusalem Post.

Other stories covering additional aspects can be seen in other publications, such as Cincinnati Enquirer here, which provided additional information on the case of Aleksandras Lileikis.

The paper had yellowed, its edges frayed. But it clearly bore the signature of Lithuanian policeman Aleksandras Lileikis, ordering a Jewish woman and her 6-year-old daughter to be shot in a Nazi death pit in 1941

.
The paper was enough proof to have him deported from the US.

The official press release from the Attorney General can be seen at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum site here.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – United States Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey announced that the U.S. Department of Justice is donating copies of trial transcripts and decisions created in connection with the Office of Special Investigations (OSI) of the Justice Department to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. These records were created over the past three decades in connection with OSI’s litigation against United States citizens or residents who were alleged to have participated in acts of persecution in collaboration with the Nazis or their allies.

“While justice for a crime as heinous as the Holocaust can never be truly served, we must work to hold perpetrators of genocide accountable,” says Museum Director Sara J. Bloomfield. “They must know that the simple passage of time will not exculpate them of their crimes. This archive stands as a testament to our government’s continued determination not to let genocide go unpunished. We are pleased that the Museum was able to help in several of these cases and that it will be a repository for this important collection.”

This collection is the largest English primary source material on the subject available anywhere, except for records created immediately following WWII.

USHMM assisted OSI with access to documentation microfilmed in archives located in Germany, Eastern Europe, and the FSU. It has provided expert witness testimony and helped in other ways.

The collection includes some 50,000 pages of transcripts covering more than 40 World War II-related cases that OSI litigated to trial as well as the transcripts of hearings in three contested extradition matters in which the OSI participated. The Justice Department is also donating copies of published and unpublished decisions for OSI cases of denaturalization, removal and extradition. The multi-volume set was donated by Thomson Reuters/West Publishing.

Since 1979, the Office of Special Investigations [OSI] has been investigating and prosecuting cases against alleged perpetrators of World War II Nazi crimes of persecution who immigrated to the U.S. It is widely regarded as the most successful law enforcement unit of its kind in the world.

According to the Jerusalem Post, only three copies of the nearly 100 cases will be made and presented to Yad Vashem, USHMM with the third copy retained by the US Department of Justice. The OSI has previously received assistance from both Yad Vashem and the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC.

Yad Vashem Archives director Dr. Haim Gertner said some low-profile cases have never been published officially.

Read the three sources at the links above to learn why scholars, historians and the public should be interested in this release.