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Lunch Hour Lecture | Voicing the Destruction of European Jewry: Yiddish and the Holocaust

29 January 2025, 1:00 pm–2:00 pm

Picture of a typewriter with Yiddish keys

Dr Sonia Gollance will be giving this Lunch Hour Lecture marking Holocaust Memorial Day.

This event is free.

Event Information

Open to

All

Availability

Yes

Cost

Free

Organiser

UCL Events

About the lecture:

Yiddish was the language spoken by approximately 5 million of the 6 million Jewish victims of the Holocaust. Until the mid-20th century, Yiddish was the most widely-spoken Jewish vernacular, and it remains a crucial language for examining the destruction of east European Jewry as documented by the victims themselves. In this talk, Dr Sonia Gollance will explain what is Yiddish, how it helps us understand prewar Jewish civilisation and the vital significance of Yiddish for Holocaust research and commemoration.

About the Speaker

Dr Sonia Gollance

Associate Professor in Yiddish at UCL

Dr Sonia Gollance is Associate Professor of Yiddish Studies at UCL. She is a scholar of Yiddish Studies and German-Jewish literature whose work focuses on dance, theatre, and gender. Her first book, It Could Lead to Dancing: Mixed-Sex Dancing and Jewish Modernity, was published by Stanford University Press in May 2021. A National Jewish Book Awards finalist and winner of a Choice Award for Outstanding Academic Title, this book was released in paperback in October 2023. Previously she taught at the University of Vienna, The Ohio State University, and the University of Göttingen (Germany). Gollance serves on the Editorial Board of In geveb: A Journal of Yiddish Studies, the British and Irish Association for Jewish Studies Committee and the Institute for Polish-Jewish Studies Advisory Board.