The 2023 Albert and Anita Goldin Endowment for Yiddish Culture Lecture: Justin Cammy

Professor Justin Cammy is Chair of the Program in Jewish Studies at Smith College. His publications range from essays on Yiddish literary history to scholarly translations of historical texts to introductions to new editions of works by Yiddish writers and memoirists. He is a leading authority on the writers of the interwar literary group Yung-Vilne (Young Vilna). His critical edition of Abraham Sutzkever’s From the Vilna Ghetto to Nuremberg won the 2022 Canadian Jewish Literary Award and was a finalist of the 2021 National Jewish Book Award.

Capturing both the horrors and the resilience of Jewish life under Nazi rule, this book provides a profoundly moving account of life and death in the Vilna Ghetto by perhaps the greatest Yiddish poet of the twentieth century. Seventy-five years after it first appeared in Yiddish, Justin Cammy provides an intensely gripping English translation of one of the earliest published memoirs of the destruction of the city once known as the Jerusalem of Lithuania.

This event is free and open to the public. RSVPs are encouraged and should be directed, along with any questions, to Hayley Salo (hayley.salo@louisville.edu)

The Ekstrom Library, including the Jewish Studies Reading Room, is an accessible facility. Please indicate if you need any special services, assistance, or accommodations to participate in this program by contacting Hayley Salo (hayley.salo@louisville.edu) by Monday, February 27.

Thank you to Anita Goldin and the the Albert and Anita Goldin Endowment for Yiddish Culture for funding this annual event.