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Holding On Through Letters: Jewish Families During the Holocaust

LECTURE: Holding On Through Letters: Jewish Families During the Holocaust

Harriet and Kenneth Kupferberg Holocaust Resource Center and Archives

Lecturer: Dr. Deborah Dwork, Clark University

Sunday, April 26th, 2015

1:00 PM

Jewish families in Nazi Europe tried to hold onto each other through letters, but wartime conditions applied. Letters were censored and could not be sent between countries at war.  How did families keep in contact with each other? And, if contact was able to be established, what could they say and what to remain silent? In her presentation Dr. Dwork will explain the ingenious ways people bypassed the censors, and she will trace how letters became threads stitching loved ones into each other’s constantly changing daily lives.

Dr. Debórah Dwork is the Rose Professor of Holocaust History and founding Director of the Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Clark University. Professor Dwork’s books include: Children With A Star, Auschwitz, co-authored with Robert Jan van Pelt, which received the National Jewish Book Award, the Spiro Kostoff Award, and was voted a Best Book by the German Book Critics. Holocaust: A History, again in collaboration with van Pelt, Terezin Album of Mariánka Zadikow, and her co-authored Flight from the Reich: Jewish Refugees, 1933-1946. Dwork’s most recent work, A Boy in Terezín: The Private Diary of Pavel Weiner is an annotated, edited diary written by a Prague boy during his third and last year in the Terezín transit camp, from April 1944 until April 1945.

Dwork has embarked upon two new projects. Saints and Liars is about Americans — Quakers, Unitarians, secular people, Jews — who traveled to Europe to aid and, step by step, engaged in rescuing people targeted by Nazi Germany and its allies. Dear Tante Elisabeth: An Extraordinary, Ordinary Christian during the Holocaust draws upon a cache of over 3,000 letters written by Jewish parents to their children and from the children to their parents. Dwork serves on many advisory boards and works with non-profit organizations and foundations concerned with Holocaust education. Above all, Dr. Dwork is a teacher and mentor to undergraduate and doctoral students who value her commitment to training the next generation of Holocaust scholars.











When: Sun., Apr. 26, 2015 at 1:00 pm
Where: Queensborough Community College
222-05 56th Ave.
718-281-5044
Price: Free
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LECTURE: Holding On Through Letters: Jewish Families During the Holocaust

Harriet and Kenneth Kupferberg Holocaust Resource Center and Archives

Lecturer: Dr. Deborah Dwork, Clark University

Sunday, April 26th, 2015

1:00 PM

Jewish families in Nazi Europe tried to hold onto each other through letters, but wartime conditions applied. Letters were censored and could not be sent between countries at war.  How did families keep in contact with each other? And, if contact was able to be established, what could they say and what to remain silent? In her presentation Dr. Dwork will explain the ingenious ways people bypassed the censors, and she will trace how letters became threads stitching loved ones into each other’s constantly changing daily lives.

Dr. Debórah Dwork is the Rose Professor of Holocaust History and founding Director of the Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Clark University. Professor Dwork’s books include: Children With A Star, Auschwitz, co-authored with Robert Jan van Pelt, which received the National Jewish Book Award, the Spiro Kostoff Award, and was voted a Best Book by the German Book Critics. Holocaust: A History, again in collaboration with van Pelt, Terezin Album of Mariánka Zadikow, and her co-authored Flight from the Reich: Jewish Refugees, 1933-1946. Dwork’s most recent work, A Boy in Terezín: The Private Diary of Pavel Weiner is an annotated, edited diary written by a Prague boy during his third and last year in the Terezín transit camp, from April 1944 until April 1945.

Dwork has embarked upon two new projects. Saints and Liars is about Americans — Quakers, Unitarians, secular people, Jews — who traveled to Europe to aid and, step by step, engaged in rescuing people targeted by Nazi Germany and its allies. Dear Tante Elisabeth: An Extraordinary, Ordinary Christian during the Holocaust draws upon a cache of over 3,000 letters written by Jewish parents to their children and from the children to their parents. Dwork serves on many advisory boards and works with non-profit organizations and foundations concerned with Holocaust education. Above all, Dr. Dwork is a teacher and mentor to undergraduate and doctoral students who value her commitment to training the next generation of Holocaust scholars.

Buy tickets/get more info now