book talk
Saints and Liars by Debórah Dwork - In-person Event
Saints and Liars is a moving history of American relief workers during the Hitler years who sought to save Jews and political opponents targeted by the Nazi regime. Praised by Publishers’ Weekly as “a gripping study of individuals’ operations in terrible extremis,” and selected by Apple Books as a Winter’s Most Anticipated Book, the story historian Debórah Dwork tells arcs through time, place, and situation. From negotiating with government representatives to doing direct (and sometimes secret) refugee relief, aid workers contended with moral questions and fast-changing historical circumstances in their mission to bring people to safety. Drawing on rich archival sources, Saints and Liarsoffers a glimpse into the lives of people who risked all to help those fleeing persecution.
Author Debórah Dwork, director of the Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Crimes Against Humanity at the Graduate Center – CUNY, will discuss her book with Marion Kaplan, Skirball Professor Emerita of Modern Jewish History, NYU.
Presented by:
book talk
discussion
2025 Summer Program Information Session – Live on Zoom
Have you always wanted to study Yiddish at the YIVO-Bard Summer Program? Are you wondering what it would be like to take the program online or in person? Join faculty and staff of the Summer Program for a brief information session. This 30-minute session will cover the program’s structure, online and in-person formats, admissions process, and more, with time for questions from prospective Summer Program students. The session will be conducted in English and are entirely optional (prospective students are not required to attend).
Learn more about the YIVO-Bard Uriel Weinreich Summer Program in Yiddish Language, Literature, and Culture.
Presented by:
discussion
film and discussion
UnBroken Film Screening with Beth Lane and Ginger Lane – In-person program
In the documentary filmUnBroken, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor embarks on an international quest to uncover answers about the plight of her mother and her six siblings who, as mere children, escaped Nazi Germany relying solely on their own youthful bravado and the kindness of German strangers.
UnBroken chronicles the seven Weber siblings who evaded certain capture and death, and ultimately escaped Nazi Germany following their mother’s incarceration and murder at Auschwitz. After being hidden in a laundry hut by a benevolent farmer, the children spent two years on their own in war-torn Germany. Emboldened by their father’s mandate that they ‘always stay together,’ the children used their own cunning and instincts to fight through hunger, loneliness, and fear, and survive bombings and attacks. Their journey culminates with a painful ultimatum, when, separated from their father, they are told that they must declare themselves orphans in order to escape to a new life in America. Unbeknownst to them, this salvation would become what would finally tear them apart, not to be reunited for another 40 years.
After the screening, join us for a panel discussion with the film’s director, producer, and writer Beth Lane and subject (Beth’s mother) Ginger Lane.
View the trailer here.
Thank you to Ancestry, the Center for Jewish History’s Family History sponsor for International Holocaust Remembrance Day programming.
Presented with The Holocaust and the United Nations Outreach Programme
Part of the Center’s programming series Anne Frank in History and Memory and film series Holocaust History on Film: Anne Frank and Beyond in connection with Anne Frank The Exhibition. Purchase your tickets to the exhibition here.
This screening is made possible by The Weber Family Arts Foundation.
Presented by:
film and discussion
lecture
“America – A New World for Jewish Children”: An Unknown Letter by Sholem Aleichem in the YIVO Archives – Live on Zoom
Within the Herman Bernstein collection at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research lies an unknown and previously unpublished letter by Sholem Aleichem (Shalom Rabinowitz, 1859–1916), one of Yiddish literature’s most renowned writers. Unidentified for over a century, it was first recognized in 2017, 101 years after the author’s death. In the letter, Sholem Aleichem addresses the theme of Jewish cultural assimilation in general, and Americanization in particular.
Apparently written not long after Sholem Aleichem first arrived in America in 1906, the letter is significant because it demonstrates his approach to the phenomenon of Jewish American children, a subject which he developed during the last decade of his life and which culminated in his final literary work, Motl, the Cantor’s Son. A close reading of the letter sheds new light on the his impressions of American Jewish immigrants and, in particular, of American Jewish children. The excitement and fascination generated by this topic would turn out to be one of his main literary subjects until his death 10 years later.
In this presentation, Yael Levi will explore the letter’s content, situating it within the historical and cultural context of Sholem Aleichem’s biography and epistolary legacy, with a particular focus on the pivotal period of Jewish migration and the experience of East European Jewish children in America.
Presented by:
lecture
book talk
The Many Lives of Anne Frank – In-person program & live on Zoom
A revealing biography of Anne Frank, exploring both her life and the impact of her extraordinary diary.
In this innovative biography, Ruth Franklin explores the transformation of Anne Frank (1929–1945) from ordinary teenager to icon, shedding new light on the young woman whose diary of her years in hiding, now translated into more than seventy languages, is the most widely read work of literature to arise from the Holocaust.
Comprehensively researched but experimental in spirit, this book chronicles and interprets Anne’s life as a Jew in Amsterdam during World War II while also telling the story of the diary—its multiple drafts, its discovery, its reception, and its message for today’s world. Writing alongside Anne rather than over her, Franklin explores the day-to-day perils of the Holocaust in the Netherlands as well as Anne’s ultimate fate, restoring her humanity and agency in all their messiness, heroism, and complexity.
With antisemitism once again in the news, The Many Lives of Anne Frank takes a fresh and timely look at the debates around Anne’s life and work, including the controversial adaptations of the diary, Anne’s evolution as a fictional character, and the ways her story and image have been politically exploited. Franklin reveals how Anne has been understood and misunderstood, both as a person and as an idea, and opens up new avenues for interpreting her life and writing in today’s hyperpolarized world.
Ruth Franklin will be in conversation with author Jonathan Rosen. Book sales and signing and a reception will follow the program. Get a discount on the price of your ticket if you pre-order the book.
Thank you to Ancestry, the Center for Jewish History’s Family History sponsor for International Holocaust Remembrance Day programming.
Presented with Jewish Lives and Jewish Book Council
Part of the Center’s programming series Anne Frank in History and Memory in connection with Anne Frank The Exhibition. Purchase your tickets to the exhibition here.
Ruth Franklin is the author of A Thousand Darknesses: Lies and Truth in Holocaust Fiction, a finalist for the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature, and of Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography. She lives in Brooklyn, NY.
Jonathan Rosen is the author, most recently, of The Best Minds: A Story of Friendship, Madness, and the Tragedy of Good Intentions, which was named a top ten book of the year by The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, Slate and People Magazine, and was chosen by Barack Obama as one of his Favorite Books of 2023. The Best Minds was also a finalist for the 2023 Pulitzer Prize. Rosen is also the author of the novels Eve’s Apple and Joy Comes in the Morning, and two additional non-fiction books: The Talmud and the Internet: A Journey Between Worlds and The Life of the Skies: Birding at the End of Nature. His essays and articles have appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal, and other publications. He is a consulting editor at The Free Press.
Presented by:
book talk
discussion
Person Place Thing with Zalmen Mlotek and Steven Skybell – In-person Event and Live on Zoom
Join YIVO and the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene for a recording of the public radio show, Person Place Thing, with actor Steven Skybell and Artistic Director of the NYTF Zalmen Mlotek. Hosted by humorist Randy Cohen, Person Place Thing is an interview show based on the idea that people are especially engaging when they speak, not directly about themselves, but something they care about. Guests talk about one person, one place, and one thing with particular meaning to them.
The conversation will consist of reflections on Skybell and Mlotek’s work, including their experiences with the North American production of Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish and Skybell’s current role as Herr Schultz in Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club on Broadway, for which he was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Musical. Skybell and Mlotek will also perform live music throughout the event.
This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.
Presented by:
discussion
conversation
At Lunch with Adam Moss – Live on Zoom
Julie Salamon (New York Times best-selling author) sits down with editor and author Adam Moss. Adam was the editor of New York magazine, The New York Times Magazine, and 7 Days. As editor of New York, he also oversaw the creation of five digital magazines: Vulture, The Cut, Daily Intelligencer, Grub Street, and The Strategist. During his tenure, New York won forty-one National Magazine Awards, including Magazine of the Year. He was an assistant managing editor of The New York Times with oversight of the Magazine, the Book Review, and the Culture, and Style sections, as well as managing editor of Esquire. He was elected to the Magazine Editors’ Hall of Fame in 2019.
Throughout his forty-year career, Moss has been drawn to origin stories— how a cultural moment or a piece of art came to be. It is a question that animates his beautiful and mind-expanding book THE WORK OF ART: How Something Comes from Nothing an illuminating exploration of the rigorous, complex, personal, and elusive work of making art. Moss wondered how an artist thinks; is there a way that artists look at the world that would be instructional for the rest of us? To answer these questions, Moss interviews a truly incredible slate of artists and traces the evolution of transcendent novels, paintings, jokes, movies, songs, and more. Weaving these conversations together with artifacts of the artist’s craft—the journal entries, napkin doodles, and early sketches that were their tools—THE WORK OF ART demystifies the creative process that leads to moments of genius. The result is a breathtaking and inspiring guided tour inside the artist’s head.
Presented by:
conversation
lecture
Autocracies in the 21st Century – Live on Zoom
We think we know what an autocratic state looks like: There is an all-powerful leader at the top who controls the police. The police threaten the people with violence. There are evil collaborators, and maybe some brave dissidents.
But in the 21st century, that bears little resemblance to reality. Nowadays, autocracies are underpinned not by one dictator, but by sophisticated networks composed of kleptocratic financial structures, surveillance technologies, and professional propagandists, all of which operate across multiple regimes. Corrupt companies in one country do business with corrupt companies in another. The police in one country can arm and train the police in another, and propagandists share resources and themes, pounding home the same messages about the weakness of democracy.
International condemnation and economic sanctions cannot move the autocrats. Even popular opposition movements, from Venezuela to Hong Kong to Moscow, don't stand a chance. These dictators aren't linked by a unifying ideology, like communism, but rather a common desire for power, wealth, and impunity.
In this conversation, journalist Anne Applebaum and YIVO Executive Director Jonathan Brent discuss how autocracies have evolved in the 21st century.
This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.
Presented by:
lecture
book talk
Closing Borders: Immigration and World War I - In-person Event
The rise of the United States and Israel as centers of Jewish life is closely tied to immigration. Yet the success story of Jewish immigration obscures the experiences of hundreds of thousands of Jews from Eastern Europe who were displaced during and after the First World War. Wherever they turned they faced closed doors. The United States shifted to a restrictive immigration regime in 1921, implicitly targeting Eastern European Jews. Most other countries also restricted immigration. Many Jews who were stranded in permanent transit after 1918 perished in the Holocaust because they could not reach safe havens.
In his new book "Between Borders: The Great Jewish Migration from Eastern Europe" Tobias Brinkmann (Penn State Univ.) sheds light on the journeys of Jewish migrants and refugees before and after the First World War. He argues that the experience of permanently displaced Jews after 1918 deserves more attention and shows parallels to the situation of unwanted refugees and migrants today.
For this event Tobias Brinkmann will be joined by José C. Moya (Barnard College/Columbia University), a leading specialist of modern Latina America and global migration.
Presented by:
book talk
discussion
2025 Summer Program Information Session – Live on Zoom
Have you always wanted to study Yiddish at the YIVO-Bard Summer Program? Are you wondering what it would be like to take the program online or in person? Join faculty and staff of the Summer Program for a brief information session. This 30-minute session will cover the program’s structure, online and in-person formats, admissions process, and more, with time for questions from prospective Summer Program students. The session will be conducted in English and are entirely optional (prospective students are not required to attend).
Learn more about the YIVO-Bard Uriel Weinreich Summer Program in Yiddish Language, Literature, and Culture.
Presented by:
discussion
book talk
On Settler Colonialism: Ideology, Violence, and Justice – Live on Zoom
Since Hamas’s attack on Israel last October 7, the term “settler colonialism” has become central to public debate in the United States. A concept new to most Americans, but already established and influential in academic circles, settler colonialism is shaping the way many people think about the history of the United States, Israel and Palestine, and a host of political issues.
By critiquing the most important writers, texts, and ideas in the field in his book On Settler Colonialism: Ideology, Violence, and Justice, Adam Kirsch shows how the concept emerged in the context of North American and Australian history and how it is being applied to Israel. He examines the sources of its appeal, which, he argues, are spiritual as much as political; how it works to delegitimize nations; and why it has the potential to turn indignation at past injustices into a source of new injustices today.
This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.
Presented by:
book talk
