The Vedem Underground Project

The Vedem Underground Project (WWW.VEDEMUNDERGROUND.COM) has been supported by Steven Spielberg's Righteous Persons Foundation,The Jewish Community Foundation of Los Angeles, American Jewish University, and the Ziering Foundation.

The project includes a museum exhibit, a documentary film and cutting edge educationa program that will teach the powerful story of Vedem (“In the Lead” in Czech), the longest-running underground magazine regularly produced by prisoners inside a Nazi concentration camp. Between 1942 and 1944, a group of Jewish boys risked their lives by producing 83 issues totaling 800 pages documenting the defiance, satire, hard-won victories and heartbreak typifying teenage life inside the walls of Czechoslovakia’s Terezin Ghetto. Vedem was a form of protest and rebellion by some of the World War II era's youngest resistance fighters.
 
Vedem Underground will include three components, all of which are geared to inspire teenagers and provide them with the tools needed to become artistic activists in their own communities.

-Exhibit: We are raising funds to cover the costs associated with transportation, promotion and educational outreach for the exhibit, which premiered in Los Angeles's Museum of Tolerance, to eight other Jewish and Holocaust museums starting in January, 2017 (http://www.vedemunderground.com/exhibit-2/).

-Documentary Film: The film which is led by an Emmy and Oscar winning team including three time Academy Award winner Mark Jonathan Harris, is seeking finishing funds to cover editing and post production costs. The Vedem Underground feature-length documentary will be distributed at film festivals and theatrically while a shortened version will accompany both the traveling exhibits and the educational programs.

-Education: We have partnered with the Anti Defamation League and American Jewish University in Los Angeles. We are raising funds for the cutting educational program that will accompany the traveling exhibit and film. This program  is designed to teach Vedem magazine's lessons of artistic activism and inspire today’s teens to spur change in their own communities, through creative means.

By January 2017, Vedem Underground will:

-Begin transporting the documentary film and museum exhibit, which includes18 five-foot by three-foot panels as well as more than 80 artifacts and artwork reproductions from Vedem. The exhibit and film's first stop is planned for the Capital Museum in Sacramento, followed by showings at Jewish History and Holocaust remembrance museums in Texas, Oregon, Wisconsin, Flordia, Ohio and Michigan. We're in discussions to bring the exhibit and film in 2018-19 to museums in New York, Chicagio, Maryland, Houston, Vancouver, Montreal, as well as to the Canadian Museum for Human Rights Museum in Winnipeg.

-Complete the editing and post-production on the revised version of the Vedem Underground documentary that will be shortened and geared towards students visiting the museum or taking the course on Vedem.

-Devise the educational curriculum and lesson plans for the cutting Edge program.

Vedem Underground’s mission is twofold:

-to educate both the general public and students about a group of teenagers that refused to be merely victims of horrifying circumstances and instead risked their lives to express themselves and maintain their identity and humanity.

- to use Vedem’s lessons of artistic activism to inspire today’s teens to spur change in their own communities through creative means.