#Holocaust #ChildrensLiterature #SholemAleichem

"In Yiddish, the Holocaust is known as der driter khurbn, the Third Destruction. That designation is a clear sign that for Ashkenazi Jews, the decimation of European Jewry was spiritually and historically identical to the destruction of the two ancient Temples in Jerusalem: first, by the Babylonians in 586 BCE, and then by the Romans in 70 CE.

The story which I’ve translated below closes out the Forverts project of the year 5785 — our year-long exploration of the Jewish holiday cycle through Yiddish children’s literature.

Because the fast day of Tisha B’Av (The Ninth of Av) — the somber holiday commemorating the Temples’ destruction — falls during the summer, it gets short shrift in Yiddish school anthologies and other collections of holiday tales. Secular Yiddish summer camps took the day as an opportunity to connect the deep and recent past, commemorating the tragedy in Europe.

Just as the ancient catastrophes yielded a liturgy of lamentation, the events of the Holocaust gave rise to poetry, testimony, fiction and drama. Survivors and more distant witnesses put pen to paper and paint to canvas, seeking to document the horror and make meaning of it.

But educators in the Yiddish school networks of North and South America faced a special set of challenges: how could they inform their pupils about the fate of Europe’s Jewish children without overwhelming them with the sense of hopelessness and helplessness? The solution: They focused on imagining the small gestures of resistance, instances of extraordinary and everyday heroism, that could be undertaken even by elementary school-aged children.

Yuri Suhl (identified in Yiddish as M.A. Suhl) and his colleagues in the leftist organization YKUF pulled together Holocaust children’s literature that had appeared immediately after the war in Yiddish youth periodicals, publishing an anthology in Buenos Aires in 1953 under the title Kinder heldn (Child Heroes). These fictional stories and poems depict children who support the fighters of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Some of them even join the partisans fighting in the forests. These young heroes often care for children even younger and more vulnerable than them, like one story in which two best friends smuggle infant twins out through Warsaw’s sewers to the relative safety of a forest encampment.

This story, 'The Little Sholem Aleichem,' describes a boy who engages in a profound act of spiritual resistance during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising: preserving and circulating the last remaining volume of the Collected Works of Sholem Aleichem among the 'schools' that were improvised even in wartime ghettos. In this way, he 'saves' the classic Yiddish humorist, and by extension, his cultural heritage.

Children can indeed be heroes. And stories of their heroism can — and should — be read by adults too. May these depictions of young people’s grace and grit in the worst of circumstances motivate us to agitate for a world in which all children enjoy safety, dignity and peace."

https://forward.com/yiddish-world/759859/story-child-fought-nazis-holocaust-ghetto-books/

New from Solzy at the Movies: Sholem Aleichem: Laughing in the Darkness

#SholemAleichem #Jewish #Yiddish #film #movies #documentary

https://solzyatthemovies.com/2025/05/13/sholem-aleichem-laughing-in-the-darkness/

Finally managed to check out this Yiddishist cultural centre in the Bronx which is rarely open, because there was a post-Purim song n' dance thing this afternoon. Interesting place, very of another time with framed portraits of every old Yiddish writer on the walls and so on. 😯

#selfie #Yiddish #Bronx #SholemAleichem

Rahel Szalit-Marcus (1888-1942) Jewish artist, illustrator born in Lithuania, then part of Russian. She was active in Berlin during the Weimar Republic and in Paris in the 1930s hanging out at well known cafés frequented by artists and intellectuals. She was best known for her illustrations of East European Jewish subjects

In 1942, Szalit-Marcus was arrested in the Vel d'Hiv Roundup, and she was deported to Auschwitz where she was murdered. Her Paris studio was ransacked, and many of her works destroyed

Shown here are lithographic illustrations from Sholem Aleichem’s unfinished novel Motl, the Cantor’s Son, 1922

#rahelszalitmarcus #art #artist #sholemaleichem #motlthecantorsson #illustrator #jewishlife #shtetllife #judaica #jewishart #womenartists #illustrations #rahelszalit #motl #unfinishednovel #illustratednovel #jewishartist

Just watched the wonderful 2011 documentary Sholem Aleichem: Laughing in the Darkness about the Yiddish writer best known for his stories about Tevye the Dairyman, the basis for the musical Fiddler on the Roof.

Aleichem was born Solomon Rabinovich in 1859 in the Russian Empire, now a region of Ukraine. Although he spoke Russian at home, he made the decision to write in Yiddish because it was more accessible to the general population than Hebrew or Russian.

The film is filled with history, personal stories and interviews - the most enjoyable for me, the clips of his 100 year old granddaughter Bel Kaufman, author of the novel Up the Down Staircase (1964).
The documentary, directed by Joseph Dorman can be viewed for free on PlutoTV

#sholemaleichem #sholemaleichemlaughinginthedarkness #belkaufman #author #writer #documentary #film #writer #novelist #tevyethedairyman #tevyaandhisdaughters #fiddlerontheroof #upthedownstaircase #streaming #plutotv #filmworld #authors #books #yiddishauthor #yiddish #judaica #streamingonplutotv

Did you know that Sholem Aleichem once wrote a scenario for an unproduced silent movie set during Chanukah?

An English translation of "The World Goes Backwards":

https://jewishcurrents.org/the-world-goes-backwards-a-screenplay-by-sholem-aleichem/

#Jews #Jewish #Chanukah #Hannukah #SilentFilm #SholemAleichem #Mazeldon