Conference- November 29, 2016: 1944, A Moment in the Life of a Community

CONFERENCE ANNOUNCEMENT

Conference: 1944: A Moment in the Life of a Community
When: November 29, 2016
Where: Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Website: http://memoirs.azrielifoundation.org/news-and-events/1944-a-moment-in-the-life-of-a-community

The Azrieli Foundation in partnership with Concordia University’s Institute for Canadian Jewish Studies and the Montreal Holocaust Memorial Centre, announces a symposium in honour of the publication of the English translation of Rabbi Pinchas Hirschprung’s memoir, Fun Natsishen Yomertol: Zikhroynes fun a Polit (1944). Published by the Azrieli Foundation as The Vale of Tears, translated by Vivian Felsen, Hirschprung’s memoir is a moving account of his escape from Nazi persecution. Rabbi Hirschprung’s memoir evokes a moment of transition in the history of the North American Jewish community when the magnitude of the ongoing Nazi destruction of European Jewry was becoming known but was still shrouded in the fog of war, and when the North American Jewish community was beginning to understand the immense challenges it faced.

The symposium will examine three major aspects of the life of the Montreal and, more generally, the North American Jewish community in 1944. Subjects to be examined include Orthodox Judaism, Yiddish culture and the Yiddish press, and the attitude of the North American Jewish community toward refugees from Nazi persecution. The symposium will
conclude with the official book launch of The Vale of Tears.

Organizers: The Azrieli Foundation’s Holocaust Survivor Memoirs Program, Concordia
University’s Institute for Canadian Jewish Studies and the Montreal Holocaust Memorial
Centre.

Registration: cjs.fas@concordia.ca