The Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust had announced its February programming. The Museum will offer a dynamic array of virtual programs and events to safely engage audiences unable to visit in person through the remainder of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The 2020 year was not without hardship and challenges, but it presented our institution, like so many others, an incredible opportunity to expand our reach through the virtual realm,” said Jack Kliger, president and CEO of the Museum. “We remain steadfast in our commitment to Holocaust education and remembrance and to celebrating the full breadth of Jewish heritage, culture and scholarship. We were thrilled to reopen our doors to visitors in the fall of 2020 while continuing to present online programming that reached nearly 150,000 additional audience members. We are excited to further grow that audience in 2021.”
FEBRUARY EVENTS
“My Name Is Sara” Screening and Discussion
Tuesday, February 2 at 2 p.m. ET
My Name is Sara, an award-winning film not yet released in theaters, is based on the true story of 13-year-old Sara Goralnik, who escaped a Jewish Ghetto in Poland and hid in plain sight in the Ukrainian countryside. Join the film’s director Steven Oritt, leadactress Zuzanna Surowy, Executive Producer Andy Intrater, Sara Goralnik’s son and Co-Executive Producer Mickey Shapiro and Kliger for a discussion on the film, co-presented by the Museum and the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial Foundation. Attendees will receive a private link to screen the film during the four-day period before the program.
The Rise and Fall of the New York Speech
Tuesday, February 2 at 2 p.m. ET
The Museum of Jewish Heritage and the Museum of the City of New York dive into the distinguishing characteristics of Jewish New York speech and its evolution over the last century. Featured panelists author EJ White (“You Talkin’ To Me?”), filmmaker Heather Quinlan (“If These Knishes Could Talk and O Brooklyn! My Brooklyn!”), Queens College linguistics professor Michael Newman and author and Georgetown University linguistics professor Deborah Tannen join moderator Lilly Tuttle, curator at the Museum of the City of New York for this virtual discussion.
The New York Librarian Who Spied on American Nazis
Tuesday, February 9 at 2 p.m. ET
Marshall Curry, Academy Award-winning filmmaker (“A Night at the Garden”); Daniel Greene, president and librarian at the Newberry Library, professor of history at Northwestern University, and curator of “Americans and the Holocaust;” and Michael Simonson, head of public outreach and archivist at the Leo Baeck Institute discuss the life and legacy of Florence Mendheim, a Jewish librarian who went undercover in the 1930s to spy on local Nazi groups in the New York area. This program is co-presented by the Museum and the Leo Baeck Institute.
“The Garden Of The Finzi-Continis” 50th Anniversary Screening and Discussion
Thursday, February 11 at 2 p.m. ET
Join the Museum for a screening and discussion of the 1970 classic, “The Garden Of The Finzi-Continis” based on the historical novel by Giorgio Bassani. Ricky Ian Gordon, composer of the operatic adaptation of the film, and Portia Prebys, longtime companion of Giorgio Bassani, join Italian film and history experts for a discussion on the film. Attendees will receive a private link to screen the film during the four-day period before the program.
Zachor: Yizkor Books as Collective Memory of a Lost World
Tuesday, February 16 at 2 p.m. ET
Yizkor (Memorial) Books document and memorialize hundreds of Jewish communities destroyed by the Nazis. Compiled from memory by groups of former residents of each town in the immediate decades after the Holocaust, Yizkor Books are some of the best sources for learning about pre-war Jewish life in Eastern and Central Europe. Of the more than 1,500 Yizkor Books in existence, hundreds have been completely or partially translated into English by JewishGen, and more than 100 translated editions are now available in print. Avraham Groll, executive director of JewishGen; Joyce Field, former JewishGen vice president for research and data acquisition and Yizkor Book project manager; Lance Ackerfeld, director of the Yizkor Book Project; and Joel Alpert, coordinator of the Yizkor Books in Print Project, explore the history, evolution and impact of Yizkor Books.
Legacies: Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla
Thursday, February 18 at 9 a.m. ET
Dr. Albert Bourla, as CEO of Pfizer, has overseen the development of the world’s first safe and effective COVID-19 vaccine. Long before he stepped up to lead one of the world’s premier biopharmaceutical companies, Bourla was born in Thessaloniki, Greece to a family with deep roots in the city’s Sephardic Jewish community. His parents were among the few to survive the Holocaust in the Greek port city. Although Bourla now lives in New York, he is deeply connected to his Greek Jewish roots. Bourla joins Robert Krulwich, science and technology journalist and longtime host of the double Peabody Award-winning show “Radiolab,” for a live conversation on Bourla’s experience as the son of Holocaust survivors and how his family and upbringing have informed his accomplished career.
Stories Survive: Jerry Lindenstraus
Sunday, February 21 at 2 p.m. ET
After witnessing the burning of synagogues during Kristallnacht, Jerry Lindenstraus and his family escaped Germany in July 1939, barely a month before the start of World War II. They made their way to Shanghai, where Lindenstraus lived and grew up for the next seven years. He attended a British-style school for Jewish refugees in Shanghai founded by Horace Kadoorie, became a bar mitzvah at a Shanghai synagogue and joined the 13th Shanghai (United) Group of the Boy Scouts. After the war, he traveled across the globe alone to join his mother in Colombia. He ultimately settled in New York in 1957 and worked in the import-export business. This Stories Survive program explores his long journey from Germany to New York through wartime Shanghai.
Returning To The Town Known As Auschwitz
Tuesday, February 23 at 5 p.m. ET
The Auschwitz Jewish Center (AJC), a Polish satellite location of the Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust, is the only Jewish presence remaining in the vicinity of Auschwitz. Since 2000, the Center has preserved Jewish memory in the town of Oświęcim and educated about the contemporary dangers of antisemitism and other forms of prejudice.
In November 2020, the Museum honored the AJC’s 20th anniversary with a special program exploring the rich Jewish history of Oświęcim. The second program in the Center’s 20th anniversary series will explore the Center’s commemoration efforts in Oświęcim and their impact on descendants of the town’s Jewish residents, featuring Barbara Posner and Shlomi Shaked, the daughter and grandson of survivors from Oświęcim, who have both reconnected with the town over the past two decades.
The Megillah In Yiddish
Thursday, February 25 at 7 p.m. ET
The Museum and the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene host a simkhe (celebration) in honor of Purim. The evening will feature a lively reading of the Meglies Ester (Book of Esther) in Yiddish (with English subtitle), as translated by the great poet Yehoash, followed by a festive musical performance. The program will also include a presentation of historic artifacts from the Museum’s collection illustrating Purim and its role in 20th century European Jewish communities.
Stories Survive: Ruth Gruener
Sunday, February 28 at 2 p.m. ET
Ruth Gruener’s parents owned a candy shop in her hometown of Lvov, Poland (now Lviv, Ukraine), where she was born in 1933. At six years old, her life changed forever. Living first under Soviet occupation and then under Nazi rule, she was forced into a ghetto and later into hiding with a customer of her parents’ candy shop. By the end of the Holocaust, Gruener was the only surviving student from her kindergarten class. She emigrated to the United States in 1949 after a challenging escape from the Soviet Union. In this Stories Survive program, she’ll share her experience of hate, kindness and coming of age during the Holocaust.
