Annual Mordkhe Schaechter Memorial Program
Co-sponsored by the League for Yiddish.
Most of this program was held in Yiddish.
Dr. Samuel Kassow (Professor of History, Trinity College)
"A Historian in the Ghetto: Emanuel Ringelblum and the Oyneg-Shabes Archive"
Between 1940 and 1943 Emanuel Ringelblum organized and directed the Oyneg Shabes Archive in the Warsaw Ghetto. Of the 60 people who worked in the archive, only 3 survived. The archive reminds us that one can fight not only with guns and rifles but also with ink and paper. Thanks to Ringelblum, future generations were able to write the history of the ghetto on the basis of not German, but rather, Jewish sources.
Gella Schweid Fishman (Yiddish educator, activist and poet)
"About My Neighbor Mordkhe Schaechter"
Musical Program
Anthony Mordechai-Tsvi Russell (Singer, bass)
Accompanied by Alexander Ruvinstein
About the Participants
Samuel Kassow teaches history at Trinity College in Hartford, CT. His book, Who Will Write Our History: Emanuel Ringelblum and the Oyneg Shabes Archive, was published in 2007. He is currently an advisor to the new Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw.
For many years Gella Schweid Fishman taught Yiddish language and culture at all levels, from kindergarten to university, and taught teachers as well. She was a student of Dr. Mordkhe Schaechter's in the Uriel Weinreich Summer Program in Yiddish Language, Literature & Culture. She and her family were neighbors of the Schaechter and Schaechter-Gottesman families for over 30 years, forming a Yiddish community they called "Di Beynbridzhivke." She is the founder and special consultant to the Archive of the Secular Yiddish Schools of North America at Stanford University Libraries.
Anthony (Mordechai-Tzvi) Russell, an African-American classical singer of opera and lieder, has embarked on a project of engagement and expression through Yiddish song with his performance of selections from The Sidor Belarsky Songbook. Visit his website.