The Book Smugglers of the Vilna Ghetto: Jewish Cultural Resistance to Nazi and Soviet Oppression

This course will explore the dramatic rescue of Jewish cultural treasures in Vilna, utilizing primary sources such as the ghetto diaries of Herman Kruk and Zelig Kalmanovitch. Each session will focus on the analysis of documents, provided in their original language and in English translation, that illuminate the actions of the book smugglers and of the powerful regimes they resisted. We will seek to address the underlying question: why were these heroic intellectuals willing to risk everything for the sake of books and papers, first under the Nazis and then again under Stalin?

David Fishman is a professor of Jewish History at The Jewish Theological Seminary. He also serves as director of Project Judaica, JTS’s program in the Former Soviet Union, which is based at Russian State University for the Humanities (Moscow) and Kyiv-Mohyla Academy University (Kiev). Dr. Fishman is the author of The Book Smugglers: Partisans, Poets and the Race to Save Jewish Treasures from the Nazis (ForEdge, 2017). Previous books include Russia’s First Modern Jews, The Rise of Modern Yiddish Culture, and an edited volume of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik’s Yiddish writings, Droshes un ksovim.

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