Contributions sought for ‘The Living Archive’

A Grassroots initiative is collecting testimonies, photographs and materials documenting how events since October 7, 2023 have impacted Australia’s Jewish community.

The Living Archive, spearheaded by activist group J-United, aims to preserve evidence that might otherwise be lost in WhatsApp groups or personal photo collections.

“We wanted to document what’s happened post-October 7 here, because at the moment, I think it’s lost in a lot of WhatsApp groups and people’s photos that they’ve taken,” explained Simmone Whine from J-United.

The project seeks to gather diverse materials including photographs of graffiti and protests, media coverage, personal testimonies, letters sent to organisations and their responses, and documentation of both positive stories and misinformation.

“We wanted to do something that would preserve the truth in the face of the distortion and the denial that goes on,” Whine said.

The archive will initially be stored digitally on a community-accessible website, with potential plans for a physical location in the future.

Whine envisions the collection serving educational purposes, accessible to Jewish studies teachers and educators from non-Jewish schools.

“So in 50 or 100 years, researchers or people interested in it could look at the material and, in a sense, really get a flavour of what was going on and how people were reacting to it,” she said.

Currently operating as a community grassroots project, Whine remains open to collaboration with historians and other professionals who wish to assist.

J-United is also actively seeking funding for the historical project.

The project already has substantial material, supplemented by a research team actively collecting content from Instagram, newspapers and other sources to capture items the community might not submit directly.

“We’ve got a record of things like the letters that we’ve sent and the responses that we received,” Whine noted.

“Maybe in the future, one day, God forbid, this happens again, there’s something there for people to look at to know what we did, what worked and what didn’t.”

Community members wishing to contribute material can contact thelivingarchives@outlook.com to receive submission forms.