Department of Germanic Languages & Literatures University of Toronto
Monday, November 10, 2014, 4:00pm
Jackman Humanities Building, Room 100, 170 St. George Street
From 1943 until the present day, Polish-language poets and prose writers, both Christians and Jews, have excavated the moral abyss of the Holocaust with open eyes. Only in Polish is there a special name, szmalcownik, for a professional blackmailer of hidden Jews. But it is a term of opprobrium, a dirty word. Guided by the incomparable writings of Czesław Miłosz, Tadeusz Borowski, Zofia Nałkowska, Bogdan Wojdowski, Andrzej Szczypiorski and Michał Głowiński, we can enter into the grayest zone of the human soul and discover what there is to salvage.
David Roskies is the Sol and Evelyn Henkind Chair in Yiddish Literature and Culture and professor of Jewish Literature at the Jewish Theological Seminary. For more information, please visit the Jewish Theological Seminary‘s website.
Presented by Al and Malka Green Yiddish Program, Committee for Yiddish UJA Federation of Greater Toronto, Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, Friends of Yiddish, Polish-Jewish Heritage Fund, Sarah and Chaim Neuberger Holocaust Education Centre UJA Federation of Greater Toronto, Toronto Workmen’s Circle/Arbeter Ring, and Centre for Jewish Studies
