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'Yung-Vilne': A cultural history of a Yiddish literary movement in interwar Poland.
No full textThis dissertation is the first comprehensive study of the Yiddish literary group 'Yung-Vilne' (1929--1941). It explores the intersection of language, lineage, and locus, and its influences on a new generation of Yiddish writing in one of Eastern Europe's most important Jewish cultural centers. I argue that the group embraced a populist modernism that allowed it to appeal to audiences in both high and mass culture, and tolerate members who ranged from the politically engaged to the aesthetically detached. Through my excavation of the group's work, and a discussion of its members' role in the broad cultural life of Vilna, I highlight the symbiotic relationship between artistic corpus and cultural context.The primary goal of the dissertation is to provide a framework for understanding the group's struggle to satisfy the expectations of local audiences for a humanistic, socially engaged literature against some members' gravitation towards more rarefied forms of artistic expression that could expand the borders of Yiddish art. Chapter one shows how Yung-Vilne was an organic outgrowth of its cultural community. Chapter two introduces Yung-Vilna's first star, Leyzer Volf. I explain that Volf's comical engagement with canonical texts from the European and Yiddish literary spheres, and his grotesque re-interpretations of Vilna's physical and cultural landscape were emblematic of larger generational anxieties of Yiddish cultural parochialism. Chapter three discusses the group's magazine, Yung-Vilne, as a way to introduce its choir of visual artists, poets, and prose writers. My discussion highlights the tension between the pull of radical politics and the desire to escape from reality through literature. Chapters four and five offer extended readings of the group's two most famous writers, Chaim Grade and Abraham Sutzkever. I show how Grade re-introduced the language of faith and religious struggle into Yiddish literature at the precise historical moment when Yiddish writing was most alienated from tradition. Chapter five suggests that Sutzkever was also striving to recover metaphysical wonder. I show how his modernist innovation transcended the limitations of Vilna's material realities. The dissertation underscores the extent to which artistic choices made by Yung-Vilne were connected to the national struggle for cultural self-definition.Thesis (Ph.D.)--Harvard University, 2003.School code: 0084
Hear the difference: "Minor" forms and modern consciousness in Yiddish and African literature.
No full textThis dissertation examines the development of narrative form in 19 th century Yiddish and 20th century West African literature. Engaging with the theory of "minor" literature articulated by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, this study adds to their framework for identifying "minor" literature---the deterritorialization of language, the connection of the individual to a political immediacy, and the collective assemblage of enunciation---a focus on the adaptation of essentially oral cultures to new modes of written discourse, as well as a discussion of intrinsically and extrinsically deterritorialized languages. In addition to the work of Deleuze and Guattari, the dissertation evaluates the work of theorists such as Vladimir Propp, Mikhail Bakhtin, Walter Ong, Frantz Fanon, and Benedict Anderson.The first part of the dissertation discusses the history of Jewish East Europe and British-dominated West Africa, focusing on the first modern literary figures in these two cultures, Reb Nakhman of Breslov and Amos Tutuola. This comparison culminates with a comparison, along lines suggested by Vladimir Propp, of Reb Nakhman's first story, "The Story of a Lost Princess," with the "Complete Gentleman" episode from Tutuola's first novel, The Palm-Wine Drinkard, Part Two offers a discussion of the first consciously modern ideologies in Jewish Eastern Europe and Francophone Africa--- haskole (the "Jewish Enlightenment") and negritude. This comparison focuses primarily on two narratives, the didactic tale Dos Vintshfingerl ("The Magic Ring") by Sholem Yankev Abramovitsh (Mendele Moykher-Sforim), and the philosophical novel L'aventure ambigue ("Ambiguous Adventure") by Cheikh Hamidou Kane. Part Three discusses the breakdown of haskole and negritude by analyzing two later Abramovitsh novels, Di Kliatshe ("The Mare") and Masoes Benyomin hashlishi ("The Travels of Benjamin the Third"), in comparison with the Nigerian novel The Interpreters by Wole Soyinka and the Ivoirian novel Les Soleils des independences ("The Suns of Independence") by Ahmadou Kourouma. The dissertation as a whole concludes with a consideration of Jewish literature in the aftermath of the Holocaust, when Yiddish no longer offers the option of an intrinsically Jewish, international, "minor" literary language, and a discussion of the linguistic options available to African writers at the beginning of the 21st century.Thesis (Ph.D.)--New York University, 2003.School code: 0146
A chance to live.
No full textThe memoirs by Hans Stefan Kohnstam were originally written in German in 1980; they were edited and translated into English by his son Pieter G. Kohnstam.See also the Pieter Kohnstam Family Collection, AR 11383
The Bondy family of Dolni Mesto and Lipnice Bohemia.
No full textFamily history with photographs, documents, maps, recipes, and family trees.Also included as an appendix is a speech by Irma Bondy, Meine Erfahrungen in Amerika, 1921/22, presented in 1923 in Vienna, Austria.Unterstadt (Dolni Mesto)Auschwitz (Concentration camp
AHC interview with Herta Weiss
No full textHerta Weiss, nee Roth, was born on April 10, 1924, in Vienna where she lived at Sechsschimmelgasse 10 in the 9th district. She attended elementary and high scool school in Vienna. After the Nazis’ rise to power she and her brother fled to the United States where they arrived on August 8th 1939. Upon her arrival Herta Weiss worked as a hairdresser and medical assistant. She now lives in New York
Daliah remembers : Her life and her adventures.
No full textdigitizedPart I: Daliah remembersPart II: AlynDahlia Lerner grew up in Berlin, Germany in the late 1920s. As a youth, she joined the Zionist Labor Movement (Habonim) and at the beginning of the Nazi era she emigrated to Palestine. She was instrumental in establishing the Kibbutz Beth Ha’avarah near the Dead Sea and its potash industry. During the 1948 war, the Kibbutz was evacuated and Daliah Lerner moved to Jerusalem. In 1953 she joined the staff of Alyn, a pediatric and adolescent rehabilitation center.Daliah Lerne
Memoirs of Robert Altschuler.
No full textBrief family background, describes his home in Vienna, and early recollections as a kid (he remembers political incidences during 1934). His father had a business partner who turned out to be an illegal Nazi. They were friendly with each other which helped the family after the Anschluss when it became obvious someone was protecting them - they were warned that his father was about to be arrested, and their property was not looted. The next chapter covers his emigration to Palestine, life in the Kibbutz, his first job, and the Jewish brigade. The last page covers his student time in the US, when he met and married his wife Miriam Oppenheimer.Robert Altschuler was born in Vienna on March 16, 1927, where he lived with his family at Albrechtsbergergasse 21, in the 12th Viennese district. The family owned a furniture business. He attended grammer school on Migazzi square in Vienna from 1933 to 1937 and went one year to a "Realschule", bevor being kicked out after the "Anschluss". In december 1938, the family fled to Palestine (passing Switzerland and Italy) where he continued his education at Kibutz Ashdot Yakov from 1939 to 1942. After leaving the Kibutz, Robert Altschuler went to school in Tel Aviv from 1943-1945, and volunteered to join the Hagana (Israeli Defense Force). In 1945, he enlisted in the British Army and joined the Jewish Brigade. In 1950, he came to Troy, New York, to study engineering at RPI (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute). Four years later, he graduated, married his wife Miriam Oppenheimer and moved to Paterson, NJ.Austrian Heritage CollectionSee also Robert Altschuler's Oral history interview in the Austrian Heritage Collection (2806
AHC Interview with Helene Altschuler
No full textHelene Altschuler was born in Vienna as Helene Kornfeld on July 17,1922, where she lived with her family at Landstrasser Hauptstrasse 102 in the third district. She attended school at the Radetzky Gymnasium from 1933 to 1938. After the "Anschluss" she fled to Bremen where she boarded a ship and came to the USA. Upon arrival she had to work and later was able to persue her education, settling eventually in Pennsylvania.Austrian Heritage CollectionAustrian Heritage Collectio
My World War II memoirs.
No full textdigitizedMano Orel was born 1925 in Athens, Greece. After the German occupation of Greece, Orel joined the secret resistance organization EAM, the Greek Liberation Front; his mother and his younger brother were deported to Auschwitz, where they perished. In 1949, Orel emigrated to Israel, and in 1967 he settled in the United States
A union of many cultures: Yiddish socialism and interracial organizing in the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, 1913--1941.
No full textThis dissertation revolves around a remarkable phenomenon of interracial union building during the Great Depression. Beginning in the early 1930s, the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union organized large numbers of Black and Hispanic workers in a predominantly Jewish-led and Jewish- and Italian-populated union through a broadly-conceived program of education, culture, and community involvement. The ILGWU admitted these new members, most of whom were women, into racially-integrated local unions. The Dressmakers' Local 22 of New York City was the largest local union to do so. Local 22 opened several branch offices in the communities where members lived including a West Harlem section for Blacks and an East Harlem section for Spanish-speaking workers. Local and International union education departments formed a dizzying array of cultural activities that were open to the families of union members as well.This study of the form of union organization in the ILGWU, called social unionism, is a dramatic exposure of the way in which race and culture intermingled at a critical place in American political and social development. I focus on the 1930s when modern unions were forming and beginning to influence public policy on a grand scale. I argue that the educational, recreational, social, and cultural programs and events produced in the ILGWU were an essential element in the rebuilding of the union from 1934--1937. The strength of the movement they envisioned was predicated on the inclusion of workers from all racial and ethnic backgrounds. They did not mean the inclusion of races and ethnic cultures to be a blending or absorption of cultures, but rather a celebration of the workers' many distinct cultures. Using manuscript collections and oral history interviews, I explore the Yiddish Socialist roots of social unionism in the ILGWU and I examine the cultural products of the union's programs in the 1930s and 1940s. I reveal how gender roles and politics dominated the context in which these programs and activities emerged and waned, and how the meanings of some activities changed over time.Thesis (Ph.D.)--Rutgers The State University of New Jersey - New Brunswick, 2003.School code: 0190