lecture
The YIVO Origins of the Oyneg Shabes Archive: Understanding the Documents of the Hersh Wasser Collection – Live on Zoom
The Oyneg Shabes archive that Emanuel Ringelblum organized in the Warsaw Ghetto was one of the most successful examples of cultural resistance in all of Nazi-occupied Europe, a reminder that Jews could fight with paper and pen as well as with guns. Ringelblum did all he could to make sure that even if the Jews of Poland did not survive, posterity would remember them on the basis of Jewish and not Nazi documents.
But Ringelblum’s archive did not arise in a vacuum. No single institution had more of an impact on its ethos than the pre-war YIVO. Many key members of the archive, including Emanuel Ringelblum, Yitzhak Giterman, Hersh Wasser, Shmuel Winter, Rachel Auerbach, and Menakhem Linder had been YIVO activists.
After the war, Wasser, one of only three survivors of the archive staff, and fearful of what would happen to Jewish life in Stalinist Poland, managed to smuggle copies of many rescued documents to the YIVO in New York. This talk by Samuel Kassow will discuss the contents of YIVO’s Hersh Wasser Collection and the insights it offers into the workings of the Oyneg Shabes archive.
Ticket Info: Free; registration is required
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lecture