Elisabeth Luz Letters, Courtesy Debórah Dwork

This event is organised as part of the Holocaust Letters exhibition events series.

Jewish families in Nazi Europe tried to hold onto each other through letters. But wartime conditions applied. Letters were censored and could not be sent between countries at war with each other. How to keep in contact? And, once contact was established, what to say — and about what to remain silent? In her presentation, Prof Debórah Dwork will trace how letters became threads stitching loved ones into each other’s constantly changing daily lives.

About the Speaker

Debórah Dwork is the Director of the Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Crimes Against Humanity at The Graduate Center–City University of New York. She is renowned for her scholarship on Holocaust history and her pathbreaking early oral recording of Holocaust survivors, weaving their narratives into the history she writes. Her award-winning books include: Flight from the Reich (W.W. Norton, 2012); Auschwitz (W.W. Norton, 2006); Holocaust (W.W. Norton, 2002); and Children With A Star (Yale University Press, 1991). Debórah Dwork is also recipient of the International Network of Genocide Scholars Lifetime Achievement Award (2020) and the Annetje Fels Kupferschmidt Award, bestowed by the Dutch Auschwitz Committee (2022).

Event guidelines for those joining online:

1. The Library will send you a Zoom link and joining instructions via email prior to the event. Please check your junk email folders.
2. Please try and join 5 minutes before the event start time and we will let you into the room (do try and bear with us if this takes a few minutes).
3. If you would like to ask a question during the event, please type your question into the chat function, and we will endeavour to answer as many questions as possible during the Q&A. Your webcam will not be seen during this event.
4. The event will be recorded for the Library’s YouTube channel and will be shared at a later date.