April 15
Conference:
Personal Stories: S. L. Shneiderman and the Commemoration of the Holocaust
2:00-5:00 PM
McKeldin Library, Rm. 6137
About the Speakers
The Meyerhoff Center recognizes Yom Ha Shoah and acknowledges the legacy of S. L. Shneiderman with this examination of personal stories of survival and of Holocaust commemoration in the years immediately after the end of world war two. After an introduction by Shneiderman's son, two of the presentations will focus on the republication of works by Shneiderman, the third on the rebirth of Jewish culture in the DP camps in the post-war period.
My Parents' Quest
Ben Shneiderman, University of Maryland Ben Shneiderman will describe his parent's family history and their journalistic motivations in helping Holocaust survivors tell their stories. His visual history captures his parents emigration from Warsaw to Paris, their role in the Spanish Civil War, and their 50 years of literary activism in New York City's Yiddish and English press. Warsaw Ghetto Diary of Mary Berg
Susan L. Pentlin, University of Central Missouri
Susan Pentlin will speak about the Diary of Mary Berg which was the first full account of the Warsaw Ghetto by a survivor to appear in print in the United States. S. L. Shneiderman edited and published the diary which began to appear in the Yiddish Morgen Zhurnal in May 1944 and in English with L. B. Fischer in February 1945. Berg's mother was a born in the United States and the family was repatriated from the Vittel Internment Camp in March 1944.
Fiorello's Sister: Gemma La Guardia Gluck's Story
Rochelle G. Saidel, Remember the Women Institute, New York, NY
Dr. Rochelle G. Saidel will speak about Fiorello's Sister: Gemma La Guardia Gluck's Story, a new and expanded memoir that she edited, just published by Syracuse University Press. This significant memoir of Holocaust, American, and European history offers an intimate glimpse into the life and times of New York City Mayor Fiorello La Guardia's family. The memoir was originally published in 1961, with S. L. Shneiderman as editor.
Cultural Reclamation in the Aftermath of the Holocaust
Miriam Isaacs, University of Maryland
Miriam Isaacs will speak about the cultural climate in the DP camps with respect to cultural reclamation, touching on some aspects that were undergoing serious reconsideration within the confines of the Yiddish cultural perspective. Some of the figures she will speak of are H. Leivick and David Volpe, Josef Gar and Rudolf Valsonek. Book Signing and Reception
About the Speakers
Ben Shneiderman is a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Maryland (www.cs.umd.edu/~ben) and created the website about his parent's history and book donation (www.lib.umd.edu/SLSES).
Susan Pentlin is professor emerita at the University of Central Missouri in Warrensburg, MO, Commissioner on the Missouri Commission on Human Rights and on the Board of Governors of the Midwest Center for Holocaust Education in Overland Park, KS. Rochelle G. Saidel, founder and director of Remember the Women Institute (based in New York City), is editor of Fiorello's Sister: Gemma La Guardia Gluck's Story and author of The Jewish Women of Ravensbrück Concentration Camp, as well as other Holocaust- related books. A political scientist, she is a senior researcher at The Center for the Study of Women and Gender, University of São Paulo, Brazil. A citizen of Israel and the United States, she divides her time among Jerusalem, New York, and São Paulo. For more information see www.rememberwomen.org.
Miriam Isaacs specializes in Yiddish language and culture, and sociolinguistics. She is currently working on a book about the range of Yiddish culture and its uses as a tool of empowerment in the Displaced Person's camps in Germany, Austria and Italy in the immediate aftermath of World War II. She continues her scholarship on Yiddish language among Hasidic Jews. Her most recent article, "Languages Sometimes in Contact: Components in Yiddish Hasidic Children's Literature," has appeared in Yiddish After the Holocaust (2004), published by Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, Boulevard Press. |
