Novitch, Miriam

NOVITCH, MIRIAM (1908–1990), Holocaust historian. Novitch was born in Yurtishki, White Russia. She studied at the gymnasium in Vilna and at the Superior School for the Languages of Eastern Europe. She traveled to France before World War II and as a French resistance fighter was arrested in June 1943 and taken to the Vittel camp in France. After being liberated by the Americans in 1944, she devoted her life to Holocaust research. She arrived in Ereẓ Israel in 1946 and was a founder of kibbutz Loḥamei ha-Getta'ot, and its Holocaust museum in 1949. She was the first curator of the museum. She was also a pioneer in collecting film on the Holocaust. She brought archival material from Eastern and Western Europe to the museum, collecting material in Poland, Germany, Czechoslovakia, Spain, Belgium, Italy, and Switzerland. She did pioneering research soon after World War II on the Sobibor death camp, Greek Jewry in the Holocaust, and the confiscation of Jewish art. She was a model to many younger researchers and helped them with scholarships and research. She made many trips to Europe in the early years following the Holocaust when research was difficult and countries were closed to such initiatives.

She published the following books: Women and The Holocaust, Personal Reflections (1965); Le Passage Des Barbares, Contribution a l'Histoire de la Deportation et de la Resistance des Juifs Grecs (1967, 1982); La Verite sur Treblinka (1967); Sobibor – Camp of Death and Revolt (1979); Spiritual Resistance: Art from Concentration Camps 1940–1945 – A Selection of Drawings and Paintings from the Collection of Kibbutz Lohamei Haghetaot (1981); and Le Genocide des Tziganes sous le Regime Nazi (1968).