Jewish Genealogical Society of Illinois

Sunday, Nov. 4, 2012:

Author, translator and playwright Ellen Cassedy will speak about her newest book, “We are Here: Memories of the Lithuanian Holocaust,” at 2 p.m., Sunday, Nov. 4, 2012, at the Jewish Genealogical Society of Illinois meeting in Temple Beth Israel, 3601 W. Dempster St., Skokie.

The JGSI meeting facilities at Temple Beth Israel will open at 12:30 p.m. to accommodate members/guests who want to use genealogy library materials, get help with genealogy websites on the Internet, or ask genealogical questions before the main program begins. For more information, visit http://www.jewishgen.org/jgsi or phone (312) 666-0100.

Cassedy, a former columnist for the Philadelphia Daily News and the author of two books for working women, has been exploring the world of the Lithuanian Holocaust for ten years. Her latest book began as a personal journey to connect with her Jewish forebears, but soon expanded into a larger quest, into how people in Lithuania—Jews and non-Jews—are engaging with their Nazi and Soviet pasts to move forward into the future.

Originally, Cassedy had set off into the former Jewish heartland of Lithuania to study Yiddish and connect with her ancestry. Then her uncle, a Holocaust survivor, told her a surprising story about his experience in a Lithuanian ghetto, and an elderly man in her ancestral town made an unsettling request. Old certainties began to dissolve, and her Jewish heritage tour took on new meaning.

Ellen Cassedy is a regular contributor to VilNews, an international web magazine based in Vilnius, Lithuania. Her articles have also been published by Huffington Post, Lilith, Hadassah, Haaretz, the Jewish Telegraph Agency, The Jewish Daily Forward and other publications.

“We are Here: Memories of the Lithuanian Holocaust” was published by the University of Nebraska Press in March 2012.