VOICES FROM THE WARSAW GHETTO

The powerful writings and art of Jews living in the Warsaw Ghetto

Edited with an Introduction by David G. Roskies; Foreword by Samuel D. Kassow

Hidden in metal containers and buried underground during World War II, these works from the Warsaw Ghetto record the Holocaust from the perspective of its first interpreters, the victims themselves. Gathered clandestinely by an underground ghetto collective called Oyneg Shabes, the collection of reportage, diaries, prose, artwork, poems, jokes, and sermons captures the heroism, tragedy, humor, and social dynamics of the ghetto. Miraculously surviving the devastation of war, this extraordinary archive encompasses a vast range of voicesyoung and old, men and women, the pious and the secular, optimists and pessimistsand chronicles different perspectives on the topics of the day while also preserving rapidly endangered cultural traditions. Described by David G. Roskies as "a civilization responding to its own destruction," these texts tell the story of the Warsaw Ghetto in real time, against time, and for all time.

David G. Roskies is the Sol and Evelyn Henkind Chair in Yiddish Literature and Culture and professor of Jewish literature at the Jewish Theological Seminary, and is the author of Against the Apocalypse: Responses to Catastrophe in Modern Jewish Culture, which was awarded the Ralph Waldo Prize from Phi Beta Kappa.

Samuel D. Kassow is Charles H. Northam Professor of History at Trinity College. He is the author of Who Will Write Our History? and editor of In Those Nightmarish Days, by Peretz Opoczynski and Josef Zelkowicz.