“Holocaust”

Blog

“Do What You Can to Survive”: Women’s Holocaust Memories in Silent Tears: The Last Yiddish Tango

Jules Riegel

The creators of the 2023 album Silent Tears: The Last Yiddish Tango grapple with complex questions about long-term trauma and the burdens of memory for women who survived the Holocaust.

Texts & Translation

הירשקע גליק

Hirshke Glik

Shmerke Kaczerginski

Translation by Lillian Leavitt

An excerpt from Kaczerginski's memoir on the origins of the Partisan Hymn.

Review

Treating Emotions in a Tempest: Review of Amy Simon’s Emotions in Yiddish Ghetto Diaries

Julie Dawson

Amy Simon deploys empathic reading to interpret the range of emotions contained in Yiddish diaries written in the ghettos of Warsaw, Lodz, and Vilna.

Blog

Announcing the 2023 Cohort of Fortunoff/In geveb Fellows

Stephen Naron and Jessica Kirzane

In geveb and the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies at Yale University are partnering to fund meaningful scholarship and creative productions based on the unique Yiddish oral histories at the Fortunoff Archive.

Review

Review of Anne-Christin Klotz's Gemeinsam gegen Deutschland

Mariusz Kałczewiak

In this study of the Jewish press in Poland, Anne-Christin Klotz identifies Polish Jewry, and specifically local Yiddish writers and journalists, as central to understanding the Nazi threat in the 1930s.

Article

Holocaust Literature and Autorevision: Shaye Shpigl’s Ghetto Stories Written in, and Rewritten after, the Lodz Ghetto

Sven-Erik Rose

Shpigl’s Yiddish-Yiddish autorevisions powerfully exemplify an author’s felt compulsion to rewrite wartime writings from a postwar perspective even when no change of language—no literal translation—was involved.

Blog

Call for Proposals: Creative, Pedagogical, and Research Projects Working with Yiddish Testimonies from the Fortunoff Video Archive

Stephen Naron

The Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies at Yale University is collaborating with the In geveb to encourage and fund scholars to work with the collection. 

Blog

Briv funem arkhiv: Nearly pulped, a photo hints at wartime history

Maksim Goldenshteyn

A reflection on the "weighty legacy" of retellng the catastrophes and upheavals that befell the Jews of Tulchyn.

Interview

"I salvage the shards": an interview with Polish poet Grzegorz Kwiatkowski

Jessica Kirzane and Grzegorz Kwiatkowski

An interview with Polish poet and musician Grzegorz Kwiatkowski.

Interview

A Meeting Place for Two Worlds: An Interview with Piotr Nazaruk and Lublin’s Grodzka Gate Center

Magdalena Kozłowska

Magdalena Kozłowska interviews Piotr Nazaruk about Lublin's Grodzka Gate Center and the center's new online exhibit of memory maps from yizkor bikher and oral history interviews.

Article

The Fourth Child

Hillel Schwartz

The author reflects on his own experiences encountering David Roskies in the 1960s and collaborating with him in Holocaust remembrance at a very different time than our present context for the memory and commemoration of the Holocaust.

Article

Letters Without Addresses: Abraham Sutzkever’s Late Style

Saul Noam Zaritt

Abraham Sutzkever's poetry is often read within the confines of "Holocaust literature". This essays reads a selection of Sutzkever’s poetry against the Holocaust, against the apocalypse, and against the horizons of meaning that the label of "Holocaust literature" might impose.

Article

Orphaned Words: Yiddish, English, and Child Speech in Postwar Cinema

Hannah Pollin-Galay

Is there a Jewish way of not saying things? In facing crises in language during the immediate post-Holocaust years, filmmakers in English and Yiddish made choices about how to balance repair and critique.

Article

Double or Nothing: Jewish Speech and Silence in Georges Perec’s *W ou le souvenir d’enfance"

Marc Caplan

This article considers the phantom traces of Yiddish in Georges Perec's W ou le souvenir d’enfance (1975).

Article

Split Identity: Jewish Scholarship in the Vilna Ghetto

David E. Fishman

In this essay, David Fishman draws a comparison between yidishe visnshaft, or Jewish studies scholarship, and Judenforschung, the Nazi field of antisemitic Jewish studies used to justify the persecution and extermination of Jews in scientific terms.

Pedagogy

לויט די לערערס | Teachers Weigh In: The Place of the Khurbn in Yiddish Language Classes

Sandra Chiritescu

How and when do our readers teach khurbn materials in their Yiddish language classes? We've assembled responses to this poll in our loyt di lerers series.

Interview

Confessions of a Yiddish Writer and Other Essays: An Interview with Goldie Morgentaler

Matthew Johnson and Corbin Allardice

Matthew Johnson and Corbin Allardice talk with Goldie Morgentaler, Chava Rosenfarb’s daughter and editor and translator of a recently published collection of Rosenfarb's essays. 

Interview

Memorializing the Holocaust in Electronic Music: An Interview with Francisco Dean

Jo Sabath

Jo Sabath talks with Francisco Dean about Dean's Frilingdik Umbazigt: As the Spring Unconquered, an electronic music piece memorializing the Holocaust that he composed and directed with high school student musicians at the Chicago Laboratory School.

Pedagogy

לויט די לערערס | Teachers Weigh In: The Place of the Khurbn in Yiddish Language Classes

Sandra Chiritescu

The latest in our series in which we poll Yiddish studies instructors about a topic related to their teaching. This time, we want to know whether and how you introduce the topic of the Holocaust in your Yiddish language instruction.

Pedagogy

Teaching Guide to Jacob Glatstein’s Anti-Fascist Poem “Goblin Nogood Has Run Out of Clout” (trans. Shandler)

Mark I. West

Mark I. West offers suggestions for teaching Jacob Glatstein's 1943 Anti-Fascist children's poem.

Blog

Translating the Holocaust

Jonah S. Boyarin

Jonah Boyarin explores the process of his translation of Mordkhe Wolfshaut-Dinkes’s holocaust memoir, Checkmate: The Miracle of My Life.

Texts & Translation

שאַך־מאַט

Checkmate

Mordkhe Wolfshaut-Dinkes

Translation by Jonah S. Boyarin

An extract from Mordkhe Wolfshaut-Dinkes's holocaust memoir.

Blog

Speaking of Sutzkever: On Yiddish in Scandinavia

Jan Schwarz

New research and translation of Avrom Sutzkever's work leads to a multilingual, multinational convening of Yiddishists in Copenhagen, Denmark and in Lund, Sweden. 

Texts & Translation

קאָמיטעט צו זאַמלען מאַטעריאַלן װעגן ייִדישן חורבן אין פּױלן, 1939. ביולעטין נומער 3

Committee for the Collection of Materials on the Destruction of the Jews in Poland, 1939. Bulletin no. 3

Translation by Joshua Price

A bulletin produced by the Vilna Komitet in 1939, included in Miriam Schulz's recent book, Der Beginn des Untergangs: Die Zerstörung der jüdischen Gemeinden in Polen und das Vermächtnis des Wilnaer Komitees ("Before the bow that was drawn": The Vilna Komitet and its documentation of the destruction of Polish Jewry), presented here in a new translation. 

Article

'Before the bow that was drawn': The Vilna Komitet and its documentation of the destruction of Polish Jewry, 1939–1940/41

Miriam Schulz

Translation by Joshua Price and Miriam Schulz

A translation of the introduction of Miriam Schulz's recent book, Der Beginn des Untergangs: Die Zerstörung der jüdischen Gemeinden in Polen und das Vermächtnis des Wilnaer Komitees ("Before the bow that was drawn": The Vilna Komitet and its documentation of the destruction of Polish Jewry).

Texts & Translation

נישגוט־לאַפּיטוט האָט פֿאַרלױרן דעם מוט

Goblin Nogood Has Run Out of Clout

Jacob Glatstein

Translation by Jeffrey Shandler

A new translation of Jacob Glatstein's powerful and playful 1943 children's poem.

Texts & Translation

רויך

Smoke

Jacob Glatstein

Translation by Hershl Hartman

A standalone poem by Jacob Glatstein

Pedagogy

Experiencing History: Jewish Perspectives on the Holocaust

Emil Kerenji

In November 2016, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum launched the beta version of Experiencing History: Jewish Perspectives on the Holocaust, a primary-source teaching tool that aims to bring Jewish sources from the Holocaust to the North American undergraduate classroom. Emil Kerenji describes the tool and how it can be used. 

Pedagogy

Resources in Yiddish Studies: The Holocaust

Zachary M. Baker

This online bibliographical series devoted to research resources in Yiddish Studies focuses on the Holocaust.

Interview

Art Against Fascism: Joshua Sobol on the Radical Possibilities of Yiddish Theater

Rachelle Grossman

Joshua Sobol speaks to Rachelle Grossman about resistance through art and the future possibilities of Yiddish theater. 

Pedagogy

לויט די לערערס | Teachers Weigh In: Yiddish in Holocaust Courses?

Hannah Pollin-Galay

Instructors share their thoughts on teaching with Yiddish in Holocaust Studies contexts. 

Pedagogy

Invitation to Participate: Yiddish in Holocaust Education

The Editors

Do you teach courses related to the Holocaust? What role does Yiddish have in those courses? Let us know in this survey.

Interview

Yiddish on Transparent: A Talk with Jill Soloway and Micah Fitzerman-Blue

Dade Lemanski and Saul Noam Zaritt

Jill Soloway and Micah Fitzerman-Blue on writing Transparent in Yiddish, whether or not you noticed. 

Interview

Anti-fascist Yiddish Song: Shneer and Eisenberg on Lin Jaldati

Erin Faigin

Lin Jaldati was a secular Dutch Jew who brought Yiddish music to communist East Germany. Now, Jewlia Eisenberg and David Shneer are reviving her music and investigating her revolutionary life. 

Article

Yiddish and the Holocaust

Alan Rosen

It seems obvious that study of the Holocaust would need to highlight Yiddish. Unfortunately though, the study of the Holocaust has often been pursued without the slightest nod to Yiddish. What is lost when Yiddish is left out? 

Interview

Ironic Inversions: Rare Soviet Yiddish Songs of WWII

Hannah Pollin-Galay

At the international symposium “Global Yiddish Culture: 1938-1949,” singer-songwriter Psoy Korolenko and Professor Anna Shternshis brought to life lost Yiddish songs of the Holocaust in an all-new concert and lecture program.