In the Warsaw and in the Lodz ghettos the Jewish journalists Joseph Zelkowicz  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.

Sponsored by the Schnurmacher Foundation. Keynote lecture to an international workshop in honor of Professor Kassow.