Journalists in Hell: Reportage in the Lodz and Warsaw Ghettos, May 6

Press release

Discussion: Journalists in Hell: Reportage in the Lodz and Warsaw Ghettos, May 6

FAIRFIELD, Conn. —On Monday, May 6 at 7 p.m., Fairfield University’s Bennett Center for Judaic Studies will welcome Samuel Kassow, Charles H. Northam Professor of History at Trinity College, who will present a lecture entitled “Journalists in Hell: Reportage in the Lodz and Warsaw Ghettos.” The lecture will take place in the Barone Campus Center, Oak Room, and is sponsored by the Schnurmacher Foundation.

In the Warsaw and in the Lodz ghettos, the Jewish journalists Joseph Zelkowicz and Peretz Opoczynski wrote reportage that individualized the ghetto experience and conveyed Jewish reactions to unfolding events in ‘real time.’ Though neither survived the Holocaust, each left dramatic descriptions of different aspects of ghetto life. Their writings, preserved in the secret ghetto archives, offer compelling insights into the struggle to survive in the Polish ghettos.

Samuel Kassow is the Charles H. Northam Professor of History at Trinity College. He is author of Students, Professors, and the State in Tsarist Russia, 1884-1917 and editor (with Edith W. Clowes and James L. West) of Between Tsar and People: The Search for a Public Identity in Tsarist Russia. He has lectured on Russian and Jewish history in many countries, including Israel, Russia, and Poland.

For more information about this and other spring 2024 lectures, visit the Bennett Center for Judaic Studies at fairfield.edu/bennettprograms.