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Rokhl Oyerbakh: The Bridge Between Wartime and Postwar Testimony
November 3, 2019 @ 7:00 pm - November 4, 2019 @ 5:00 pm
“Rokhl Oyerbakh:
The Bridge Between Wartime and Postwar Testimony”
NOVEMBER 3 – 4, 2019
AT YALE UNIVERSITY
In two weeks, the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies will host the first ever international symposium dedicated to the legacy of writer, historian, and documentarian Rokhl Oyerbakh (Rachel Auerbach). Keynote will be delivered by Samuel Kassow, author and professor of history: “We Fulfilled Our Mission’: The Legacy of Rokhl Oyerbakh.”
ROKHL OYERBAKH, SURVIVOR-HISTORIAN
Rokhl Oyerbakh was a writer, essayist and a member of the Oyneg Shabes underground documentation effort in the Warsaw Ghetto. As one of the only survivors of Oyneg Shabes, she helped recover buried documentation after the war before emigrating to Israel. As a survivor-historian, Oyerbakh’s work to document first-person accounts of victims’ experiences continued as Director of Yad Vashem’s Department for the Collection of Witness Testimony. She was responsible for curating survivor testimony for the Eichmann trial, and played a prominent role as a survivor-advocate in the controversy surrounding Jean-François Steiner’s book Treblinka. These are but a few facets of Oyerbakh’s important contributions to our understanding of the survivor experience and the history of the Holocaust.
OYERBAKH’S WORK AND LEGACY OF OYERBAKH
Laura Jockusch, Albert Abramson Associate Professor of Holocaust Studies at Brandeis University, on Rokhl Oyerbakh: “The goal of this conference is to shed light on a woman who repeatedly made important intellectual and cultural achievements throughout her life – from the interwar period to the postwar. Oyerbakh and her allies understood the critical need to document the traumatic historic events unfolding in front of her eyes, with the hope that someday, someone would write the history of this great destruction, commemorate the dead, and bring those responsible to justice. Her work then, and her work at the fore of collecting the testimonies of survivors postwar, contributed significantly to our understanding of the survivor experience, and of the history of the Holocaust as a whole.”
FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC, no registration required
WEBSITE: http://bit.ly/oyerbakh
PROGRAM: http://fortunoff.library.yale.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Conference-program.pdf
With questions, please contact Stephen Naron at stephen.naron@yale.edu
CONFERENCE PROGRAM
Sunday, November 3rd, 2019
Film Screening of Unzere Kinder (1948, 35mm print)
7:00 PM // Whitney Humanities Center, Yale Campus, New Haven, CT
with introduction by Sharon Pucker Rivo, Executive Director, National Center for Jewish Film, Brandeis University
followed by a Talkback with Samuel Kassow, Charles H. Northam Professor of History, Trinity College; David Roskies, Sol and Evelyn Henkind Chair in Yiddish Literature and Culture, Professor of Jewish literature, Jewish Theological Seminary; Karolina Szymaniak, Assistant Professor at the Department of Jewish Studies/University of Wrocław
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Monday, November 4th, 2019
Rokhl Oyerbakh: The Bridge Between Wartime and Postwar Testimony
9:00 AM TO 5:00 PM // Sterling Memorial Library, Lecture Hall, Yale Campus, New Haven, CT
Schedule 9:00AM Coffee
9:20AM Welcome & Introduction by Stephen Naron, Director, Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies
9:30AM to 10:30AM Keynote by Samuel Kassow, Charles H. Northam Professor of History, Trinity College. Paper: “We Fulfilled Our Mission:” The Legacy of Rokhl Oyerbakh
10:30AM to 12:30PM Panel I: Prewar and Wartime
- “Il n’y a pas d’amour heureux – Itzik Manger and Rokhl Oyerbakh,” by Professor Efrat Gal-ed, Jewish Studies, Department of Yiddish Culture, Language and Literature, Heinrich Heine University, Düsseldorf
- “Rokhl Oyerbakh – the Making of a Public Intellectual,” by Karolina Szymaniak, Assistant Professor at the Department of Jewish Studies, University of Wrocław
- “Rokhl Oyerbakh’s Great Lament,” by David Roskies, Sol and Evelyn Henkind Chair in Yiddish Literature and Culture, Professor of Jewish literature, Jewish Theological Seminary
- Respondent: Avinoam Patt, Doris and Simon Konover Chair of Judaic Studies, Director, Center for Judaic Studies and Contemporary Jewish Life, University of Connecticut
12:30PM to 1:30PM Lunch 1:30PM to 3:30PM Panel II: Postwar
- “Rokhl Oyerbakh and the Eichmann Trial,” by Leora Bilsky, Professor at the Tel Aviv University Faculty of Law, and Director of the Minerva Center for Human Rights, Tel Aviv University
- “’Here Every Day is Eichmann,’ Rokhl Oyerbakh and the early days of Yad Vashem,” by Dr. Boaz Cohen, Western Galilee College Akko, Shaanan College Haifa
- “Oyerbakh and the Treblinka Affair (1966),” by Samuel Moyn, Henry R. Luce Professor of Jurisprudence at Yale Law School and Professor of History at Yale University
- Respondent: Laura Jockusch, Albert Abramson Associate Professor of Holocaust Studies, Brandeis University
3:30PM Roundtable
- Havi Dreifuss, Professor in Jewish history, Tel Aviv University
- Glenn Dynner, Professor and Chair of Religion Department, Sarah Lawrence College
- Dr. Lisa M. Leff, Director of the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
- Sven-Erik Rose, Associate Professor of German and of Comparative Literature, University of California, Davis
4:30pm Conference Closing and Reception
TRAVEL RECOMMENDATIONS
Air travel (suggested airports):
- Bradley International Airport, Hartford, CT
- Tweed-New Haven airport
- All NYC airports (JFK, LaGuardia, Newark)
- Boston’s Logan International airport
Arriving by train:
- Amtrak to New Haven’s Union Station
- MetroNorth from New York’s Grand Central Terminal to New Haven
Hotel accommodations (suggested):
- The Blake
- The Study
- The Omni
About Fortunoff Archive at Yale University Library
In 1979, the Holocaust Survivors Film Project began collecting video-taped interviews of Holocaust surivors in the New Haven area. In 1981, the collection was donated to Yale University and The Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, part of the Yale University Library, opened its doors to the public the following year. The Fortunoff Archive as been working to record, collect and preserve Holocaust witness testimonies — and facilitate the work of researchers, educators and the general public — ever since.
The Fortunoff Archive currently holds more than 4,400 testimonies, which are comprised of over 12,000 recorded hours of videotape. Testimonies were produced in cooperation with thirty-six affiliated projects across North America, South America, Europe, and Israel, and each project maintains a duplicate collection of locally recorded videotapes. The Fortunoff Archive and its affiliates recorded the testimonies of willing individuals with first-hand experience of the Nazi persecutions, including those who were in hiding, survivors, bystanders, resistants, and liberators. Testimonies were recorded in the language the witness preferred, and range in length from 30 minutes to over 40 hours (recorded over several sessions).
PRESS CONTACTS
Cristiana Pena / cristiana.a.pena@gmail.com / 516.320.0038
Nick Porter / nicksporter@gmail.com / 909.262.5920