Writing Collective Trauma with Lilach Naishtat: The Kibbutz Buchenwald Journal (1945-1948)

Event co-sponsored by the Institute for Holocaust, Genocide, and Memory Studies, University of Massachusetts;
the Department of German, Amherst College; and the Department of German and Italian, Smith College.

Please join us on Thursday, March 12, 2026, 4:30pm at The Institute for Holocaust, Genocide, and Memory Studies at the University of Massachusetts for a talk with Lilach Naishtat, PhD (Ruth Meltzer Fellow, Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies, University of Pennsylvania, and Senior Lecturer, Kibbutzim College of Education, Tel Aviv, Israel).

Based on her book, Rebuilding Together: The Story of Kibbutz Buchenwald Journal, 1945–1948 (2025), Professor Lilach Naishtat discusses the extraordinary archive of the Kibbutz Netzer Sereni, founded in Germany in 1945 by 16 Jewish Holocaust survivors. 

Members kept a collective journal, filled with reports, recollections, and letters in Yiddish and Hebrew, alongside poetry and literary prose.

Professor Naishtat has over thirty years of experience in academia in Israel and the U.S., including working as a visiting scholar in the Department of Comparative Literature at Harvard University (2019–2020). In addition to authoring books and academic papers she has directed a documentary film, curated several art exhibitions, and served as academic director of the Center for Contemplative Pedagogy at KCE (2014–2024). Her fields of expertise include Romantic poetry, Holocaust testimonies, Hebrew literature, the fragment, collaborative reading and writing, poetry and architecture, the Song of Songs, Holocaust education, and contemplative pedagogy. Naishtat holds a Ph.D. from Tel Aviv University.

Image credit: Members of Kibbutz Buchenwald, in 1945. Their journal captures the group's shared dreams and dilemmas during postwar recovery. From Kibbutz Netzer Sereni Archives.

The Institute for Holocaust, Genocide, and Memory Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst is located at 758 North Pleasant Street, Amherst MA, 01002.

University of Massachusetts Parking Information.

Please email @email with any questions.