Holocaust survivors gather at the Stuttgart displaced persons camp in 1946 to commemorate the fourth anniversary of the destruction of the Jewish community of Kozienice, Poland. US Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Lewis Shabasson
After the devastation of the Holocaust, survivors collaboratively authored yizker bikher, memorial books, devoted to the lives and deaths of the Jewish communities of Eastern Europe. Over a thousand of these volumes memorialize the writers’ hometowns and pass collective community memory to descendants of both victims and survivors. Similar to scrapbooks, the text is supported by an array of visual materials: hand-drawn maps, sketches, photographs, and documents from daily life. Far from dry, matter-of-fact historical material, yizker bikher give space to rich descriptions of everyday prewar Jewish life: institutions, folklore, idioms, memoirs, biographies, and—only towards the very end of a given volume—individual and communal experiences of violence during the Nazi era.
Drawing on the fields of history, sociology, anthropology, Jewish studies, material culture, art history, and literature, this symposium brings a critical and multifocal lens to yizker bikher. While the symposium will focus on post-Holocaust memorial books, the themes, approaches, and methods are helpful for academics who engage with memorial books across geographic regions and time periods.
Symposium Conveners
Jennifer Rich, Chair and Associate Professor of Sociology; Executive Director of the Rowan Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Human Rights, Rowan University
Robert M. Ehrenreich, Director, Academic Research and Dissemination, Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Participants and Chairs
Eliyana Adler, Associate Professor, History and Judaic Studies, Binghamton University
Lauren Coffey, MA Student, Holocaust and Genocide Education, Rowan University
Elena Hoffenberg, PhD Candidate, Modern Jewish History, University of Chicago
Emily Klein, Program Coordinator, Broadening Academia Initiative, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Julia Liden, Program Coordinator, Programs on Ethics, Religion, and the Holocaust, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Jessica Mack, Assistant Professor, History, and Co-Director of the Rowan Center for Digital Humanities Research, Rowan University
Jody Russell Manning, Teaching Professor, Modern European History, Rowan University
Cian Pappenheim, PhD Student, Theology and Religious Studies, University of Glasgow
Rachel Perry, Professor, Art History, Weiss-Livnat International Center for Holocaust Research and Education, University of Haifa
Martina Ravagnan, Collections Manager, The Wiener Holocaust Library
Steven Samols, Rothschild Hanadiv Europe Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Hebrew and Jewish Studies, University College London
Samuel Spinner, Assistant Professor, Zelda and Myer Tandetnik Chair in Yiddish Language, Literature, and Culture, Johns Hopkins University
Aleksandra Szczepan, Postdoctoral Researcher, University of Potsdam
Event Schedule
8:30 – 9:00 Doors Open
9:00 – 9:20 Introductory Remarks
9:20 – 10:00 “Let this Book be a Monument”: Post-Holocaust Memorial Books
10: 00 – 10:15 Break
10:15 – 11:30 Session 1: Creating and Defining Yizker Bikher
11:30 – 11:45 Break
11:45 – 1:00 Session 2: Reconsidering the Visual Architecture of Yizker Bikher
1:00 – 2:00 Break
2:00 – 3:15 Session 3: The Language of Yizker Bikher
3:15 – 3:30 Break
3:30 – 4:45 Session 4: The Form and Function of Yizker Bikher
4:45 – 5:00 Concluding Remarks
This program is free and open to the public, but registration is required.
For more information, please contact rchghr@rowan.edu.