The Amintiri Notebook: Children’s Friendship Poems and Postwar Resilience in a 1945 Jewish Orphanage
Undergraduate Project
Project Information
HBI Research Associate Ornit Barkai is continuing her ongoing research project examining a rare collection of short friendship poems written in 1945 by Jewish child survivors gathered in a small orphanage in Bucharest, Romania, after the Holocaust. Composed by children around ten years old, the poems reflect a tradition in which classmates exchanged brief verses as keepsakes of friendship, memory, and emotional support. The project highlights how young Jewish children - primarily girls - expressed friendship, emotions, and social bonds, and examines gendered traditions of peer writing and memory practices in postwar Jewish communities
The above texts have been transcribed and translated into English. Dr. Barkai would like the help of an intern to organize and catalog the poems, laying the groundwork for a later research phase that will involve interpretive analysis of their form, language, and themes. Other research duties will include locating and organizing online research and biblographic sources.
Profile of Appropriate Candidate
- Strong written English comprehension and attention to detail
- Interest in Holocaust studies, Jewish history, creative writing, cultural studies, literature, or childhood studies is a plus but not required
- Familiarity with Microsoft Word, Excel, and Zotero (or willingness to learn)
- Experience working with handwritten historical texts or structured research templates is helpful but not required
- Some understanding of translation or cross-translation and/or linguistics/Romanian is helpful but not required
- Professionalism and sensitivity when handling Holocaust-related historical materials
- Strong organizational and accurate data-entry skills