Before the Warsaw Ghetto: The Pre-War Writings of Peretz Opoczynski

Max Weinreich Fellowship Lecture The Dina Abramowicz Emerging Scholar Fellowship Admission: Free

Best known for the reportages from the Warsaw Ghetto he wrote for the famed Oyneg-Shabes archive while working as a mailman in the ghetto, Peretz Opoczynski was also a journalist and poet in the years before the war, an account of which is the subject of this lecture. Among his pre-war literary works are essays based on his recollections from  POW camps from the First World War. A substantial part of his interwar writings also includes hundreds of Hasidic tales, as well as a series of essays on Jewish holidays and religious teachings. A third segment of his work is more experimental, and includes expressionist prose and poetry, as well as reportages on Jewish life in urban centers, such as Łódź and Warsaw, as well as in the Polish provinces.

About the Speaker

Monika Polit graduated from Łódź University and Warsaw University (PhD at IBL PAN in 2011). Since 2013, she has held the position of assistant professor at the Historical Institute of Warsaw University. Among her numerous publications are: Writings of Peretz Opoczynski (2017); "Meine judische Seele furchtet den Tag des Gerichts nicht” Mordechaj Chaim Rumkowski — Wahrheit und Legende (2017); Józef Zelkowicz, Notes from the Lodz Ghetto 1941-1944 (2016); Encyclopedia of the Lodz Ghetto (2014); Fates of the Lodz Jews, 10 Volume of the Ringelblum Archive (2013); Peretz Opoczynski, Reportages from the Warsaw Ghetto (2009); Shmul Rozenstein, Notebook (2008)