Events
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Making and Unmaking Literature in the Warsaw, Lodz, and Vilna Ghettos
Book talk by Sven-Erik Rose, Davis, CAONLINE VA, United StatesIn this book talk, author Sven-Erik Rose speaks about his study of literature written by Jewish authors while interned in Nazi ghettos. His book attends to how authors processed their horrific experiences through poetry and prose. This is the first study devoted to how little known but essential authors grappled with the destitution of ghetto existence by writing within, at the limits of, and against an array of literary scenarios, tropes, plot lines, and generic conventions, including those of nature lyric, modernist interior monologue, the realist social novel, the detective story, and the Gothic horror tale. Contending with starvation, disease, desperate housing conditions and the looming threat of being murdered, inhabitants [...]
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Who Will Draw Our History?
Women’s Graphic Narratives of the Holocaust, 1944-1949
Presentation by Rachel Perry, PhDONLINE VA, United StatesIn this talk, art historian and curator Rachel Perry discusses ten graphic narratives of their experiences of Nazi persecution created by women immediately after liberation. Lacking photographs of what they witnessed and endured, these "first responders" used visual storytelling to counter perpetrator and liberator sources and represent maternal loss, sexual violence, forced labor, and bodily trauma—experiences rarely recorded in canonical Holocaust testimony. Drawing on archives across Europe, Israel, and the United States, this talk recovers marginalized stories that predate Art Spiegelman's Maus by decades. Featured Artists: Lea Grundig (1906-1977), Luba Krugman Gurdus (1914-2011), Mária Turán Hacker (1886-1967), Edit Bán Kiss (1905-1966), Regina Lichter-Liron (1920-1995), Ella Liebermann-Shiber (1927-1998), Ágnes Lukács (1920-2016), Zsuza Merényi (1925-1990), [...]
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Costume as Character:
Celebrating the Legacy of Ruth Morley
Center for Jewish History
15 West 16th Street, New York, NYCenter for Jewish History 15 West 16th Street, New York, NY, United StatesCostume designer Ruth Morley was behind the iconic looks of several characters now considered legendary in cinema history. A Kindertransport child refugee from Vienna, in the 1950s she studied under German-American painter Hans Hofmann and went on to design costumes for opera and ballet before moving into theater, film and television. Her work can be seen in such iconic films as The Hustler (1961), The Miracle Worker (1962, Academy Award nomination), Taxi Driver (1976), Annie Hall (1977), Kramer vs Kramer (1979), One from the Heart (1981), The Chosen (1981), Tootsie (1982, BAFTA nomination) and Ghost (1990). In the 1980’s she began teaching and mentoring costume design graduate students at Brandeis and NYU. Join panelists Deborah Nadoolman Landis (Costume Designer and Distinguished Professor at UCLA’s School of Theater, Film and Television, Founding [...]
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Jewish Emigré Artists, from Albers to Hesse
Presentations by Ori Z. Soltes
Online Roundtable by the 92nd Street Y in three partsONLINE VA, United StatesThis class with acclaimed professor Ori Z. Soltes will consider the lives of eight major Jewish artists of the 20th century, and will discuss their experiences migrating under duress just before, during, or after the Holocaust. From Fritz Ascher to Anni Albers to Eva Hesse, we’ll learn about how these great artists fled, adapted, and survived through the 20th century and went on to create powerful works of art that we still recognize today. REGISTER HERE Session 1: March 13 Immigration and Art from One Generation to Another We'll begin with brief discussions of Ben Shahn and Raphael Soyer, then focus primarily on Fritz Ascher and Rudi Lesser, before concluding with Michael Iofin and David Stern. [...]
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The Third Generation.
‘So are these the footsteps of my grandmother or my own?’
Presentation by Sabine Apostolo, Vienna (Austria)ONLINE VA, United StatesCurator Sabine Apostolo gives a virtual tour through the internationally traveling exhibition “The Third Generation. The Holocaust in Family Memory”, which was developed by the Jewish Museum Vienna. Image above: Die Dritte Generation Titel, Zitat: Cécile Wajsbrot, Mémorial, Göttingen 2023, 87 © JMW / Drahtzieher Design & Kommunikation Eighty years after the Holocaust, the last eyewitnesses are dying. Their stories, but also their trauma, have been passed on to their children and grandchildren. While the Second Generation grew up as direct observers of their parents’ psychological and physical damage, the Third Generation can look with greater distance at the family histories, in which memories and silence, family myths and secrets, and overwhelming or missing family legacies are ever-present. The exhibition [...]
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For the Love of Labor.
The Life of Pauline Newman
Book talk by Cathryn J. PrinceONLINE VA, United StatesIn this book talk, author Cathryn J. Prince follows Pauline Newman’s life from a youth split between Lithuania and New York City sweatshops to her work as an advisor to New Deal–era labor secretary Frances Perkins. From her start as one of the youngest activists in US history, Pauline Newman helped shape the International Ladies' Garment Workers’ Union (ILGWU) into a dominant force in industrial America. Cathryn J. Prince tells the story of a self-educated Jewish immigrant who dedicated herself to a legion of causes and lifelong battles against sexism and classism. Newman’s long hours at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory informed her entrée into labor activism. In the following years, she tirelessly advocated for workers, ran for New York Secretary [...]
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Stolen Jewish Legacies:
The Fate of Eugen Spiro and His Looted Collection
Presentation by Anne Uhrlandt, Munich (Germany)ONLINE VA, United StatesIn this online lecture Anne Uhrlandt will present the forgotten story of once prominent German Jewish artist and collector Eugen Spiro (April 18, 1874, Wrocław - September 26, 1972, New York City). During her two-year research project, Uhrlandt reconstructed the artist’s biography and the fate of his looted collection by bringing together evidence and sources from numerous international archives. Two case studies about specific stolen objects highlight the dramatic events following both s the Nazi government ‘s expulsion of Spiro from his profession, robbing him of his sources of income, and the theft of his art collection, which included both his own works of art and works of art by other artists. The case studies demonstrate the potential of provenance [...]
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THE RESTLESS HUNGARIAN
Conversation with Film Director Tom WeidlingerONLINE VA, United StatesThe Restless Hungarian (2021) is a personal narrative set against the backdrop of the Hungarian Jewish diaspora, the rise of Modernism, and the Cold War. The film centers on Paul Weidlinger, one of the most important structural engineers of the twentieth century who created the strength behind iconic skyscrapers, churches, museums, embassies, and monumental sculptures by Picasso, Noguchi, and Dubuffet. Early in his career, he broke from mainstream modernism with his concept of the “Joy of Space”. Behind his professional success, however, was a deeply troubled private life marked by loss, denial, and family tragedy. As the filmmaker—his son—begins to explore Paul’s past, the story shifts into a deeply personal journey across continents, uncovering hidden Jewish roots and the family’s suffering [...]
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Reconciling Identities:
Marcel Janco and the Romanian Avant-Garde in the Interwar Years
Presentation by Amelia Miholca
followed by a conversation with Nicola Baird, PhD, London (UK)ONLINE VA, United StatesIn her presentation, Dr. Miholca will spotlight the artistic and historical significance of Marcel Janco and the Romanian avant-garde group during a period of tremendous creative experimentation and productivity, when artists and writers merged their Jewish identity with the international identity they sought to foster through their network of dadaist and constructivist magazines. Janco, alongside other Romanian-Jewish artists like M. H. Maxy, Victor Brauner, Mattis Teutsch, and Benjamin Fondane, wished to capitalize on the Dada movement initiated by Janco and Tristan Tzara—alongside Hugo Ball, in Zurich, 1916—with their own avant-garde movement in Bucharest that mainly emerged through magazines such as Contimporanul (1922-1932), 75HP (1924) and Integral (1925-1928). The presentation will be followed by a conversation with Nicola Baird, PhD. Introductory [...]
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Newish and Jewish from Europe:
Refugees, Survivors and the Spread of Modernism
Presentation by Samuel D. GruberONLINE VA, United StatesThe architecture of the American Jewish community was transformed following World War II by émigré and refugee architects engaged to design synagogues and Jewish Community Centers. Image above: Hamden, CT, Mishkan Israel sanctuary, photo S. Gruber, 2011. Architects: Fritz Nathan and Bertram Bassuk, Ark: Ben Shahn, Stained Glass: Robert Pinart and Jean-Jacques Duval Eric Mendelsohn’s synagogues for St. Louis, Cleveland and elsewhere are well known but the work of Fritz Nathan, Mendelsohn’s German-Jewish contemporary, is virtually forgotten. https://fritzaschersociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/St_Louis_MO_Bnai_Amoona_int_sketch-1024x638.jpg Erich Mendelsohn, sketch for Congregation Bnai Amoona, St Louis, MO https://fritzaschersociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/St_Louis_MO_Bnai_Amoona_model-1024x732.jpg Erich Mendelsohn, Model for Congregation Bnai Amoona, St Louis, MO Nathan arrived in the United States in 1940 and designed synagogues, teamed with émigré artists, in the New York and New [...]
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