Beba Epstein: The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Girl

YIVO's Bruce and Francesca Cernia Slovin Online Museum uses interactive multimedia storytelling to contextualize hundreds of artifacts from the YIVO archives, making connections between the lives of individuals and the history they lived through. The Museum has been used in classrooms and Holocaust education training programs around the world, including the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia, and viewed in over 160 countries. 

There are currently two exhibitions on view, Beba Epstein: The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Girl, and Yitskhok Rudashevski: A Teenager’s Account of Life and Death in the Vilna Ghetto. In addition to showcasing their stories, the museum was developed as a teaching resource with accompanying guides and lesson plans for each exhibition. 

In the Beba exhibition, students will learn about Jewish life before WWII and the Holocaust through Beba’s autobiography. The exhibition is accessible to learners starting from age 8, but was primarily designed for 6th to 8th graders. There are guides for elementary, middle, and high school students.