How songs of the Jewish ghetto, camps and secret cabarets became a musical
The Folksbiene's ‘Amid Falling Walls’ highlights three generations of one family’s work in Yiddish music
The Folksbiene's ‘Amid Falling Walls’ highlights three generations of one family’s work in Yiddish music
For 87 years, Signora Speranza Sonnino has awoken to the sounds of the ghetto. Located on the banks of the Tiber near the city center, this area takes it name from the 300-plus years in which the Jews of Rome were penned in here by Papal decree. When the walls of the ghetto had been…
Denmark, once home to a king who famously objected to Nazi deportation plans, recently horrified the world by publicizing a “ghetto list” and enacting new laws pertaining to those who live in what the government classified as a ghetto. What does that mean, exactly? “Starting at the age of 1, ‘ghetto children’ must be separated…
Some 75 years ago, a group of Jews under German occupation in Vilna was assigned to assist Nazi authorities in curating books and other cultural items destined for shipment to Germany. There, the selection of Judaica materials was to be conserved as a collection of artifacts from an extinct people. Some items were indeed shipped…
Princeton professor Mitchell Duneier came to town to talk about his new book, “Ghetto: The Invention of a Place, the History of an Idea,” and sign a few copies. But certain events in the week preceding Duneier’s November 12 presentation, at the Chicago Humanities Festival, have added extra weight to a discussion about the nature…
By any measure, the Warsaw Ghetto was hell on earth. An urban prison zone in the middle of German-occupied Warsaw, after November 1940 the ghetto was enclosed by a ten-foot high wall that was topped with barbed wire and tightly guarded. German authorities packed over 400,000 Jews of all ages into an area of just…
This piece was written by and shared with permission from the . Throughout history, the mikveh has stood at the very core of religious Jewish life and practice, and said to protect the Jewish people both physically and spiritually. It is therefore fitting on the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day, to explore some of the…
● The Clandestine History of the Kovno Jewish Ghetto Police Translated and edited by Samuel Schalkowsky Indiana University Press, 416 pages, $35 When we think of Lithuanian Jewry, we tend to think of Vilnius, “The Yerushalaim of Litte,” for its fame as a Jewish religious and intellectual center, its great scholars, and its contribution to…