- This event has ended.
Speaker: Professor Hannah Pollin-Galay (Senior Lecturer, Department of Literature; Advisor, Yiddish MA Program, Tel Aviv University)
The specter of multilingualism has haunted the study of Holocaust testimony for decades. Several factors have stretched the linguistic spread of Holocaust witnessing: the fall of the Soviet Union rendered archives in lesser known languages more accessible; organizations like the Shoah Foundation began recording stories beyond American borders and audio-video technology allowed languages more typically reserved for oral discourse to be recorded for academic study. Having enabled witnesses to tell their stories in this array of tongues, scholars and institutions now face the task of interpreting, using and curating this polyglot material. What can we learn from this encounter between languages? As a case study, this lecture will focus on the testimonies of Lithuanian Jewish survivors and their testimonies in Yiddish, Hebrew and English.