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BENEFIT SCREENING

Triplex Cinema's benefit screening of 'Who Will Write Our History' features talkback with historian and Yiddish Book Center founder

Historian Sam Kassow and Yiddish Book Center founder Aaron Lansky to participate in post-screening conversation

  • 2 min to read
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The Triplex Cinema will hold a benefit screening of "Who Will Write Our History," 6:30 p.m. May 14. 

GREAT BARRINGTON — Sam Kassow, a leading historian of Polish Jewry and the Holocaust, will be joined by Stockbridge resident Aaron Lansky, the founder and director of the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, in a special talkback event benefiting the Triplex Cinema, 6:30 p.m. May 14.

The conversation between Kassow and Lansky will follow a screening of the 2018 documentary film "Who Will Write Our History," based on Kassow's 2007 book of the same name. Kassow will also be signing books. Tickets are $100 per person and available at thetriplex.org 

"Having Sam Kassow and Aaron Lansky at the Triplex is a tremendous gift to us and the community, and we are deeply honored that they will be here to discuss the important work each of them have devoted their lives to," Nicki Wilson, president of the Triplex Board of Directors, said in a news release. "When we reopened the Triplex late in 2023, we never envisioned having such an important event like this one, which will enrich our community in countless ways.”

In the book and film, Kassow writes and speaks about the critical importance of preserving historical documents. He details historical events in Poland leading up to and including World War II that affected and eventually eliminated the Warsaw Ghetto.

Academy Award-winner Adrian Brody and three-time Academy Award nominee Joan Allen provide voiceovers for the two critical figures in the film. The documentary is directed by Roberta Grossman and produced by Nancy Spielberg, Ori Eisen, Al Berg and Ronald Lauder.

Established in 1940 by the German authorities, the Warsaw Ghetto housed 460,000 Jews in an area of 1.3 square miles; fewer than 60,000 Jews are thought to have survived after the majority were transferred to concentration camps and killed. Half of all Jewish Holocaust victims, around 3 million, were from Poland.

The longtime Charles Northam Professor of History at Trinity College, Kassow was a key consultant to the Museum of the History of Polish Jews, which opened on the site of the Warsaw Ghetto and has been the author of numerous books on the Holocaust. Kassow was on the team of scholars chosen by Yad Vashem, Israel’s official memorial to the victims of the Holocaust, to write a one-volume history of the Holocaust in Poland.

"Who Will Write Our History" recounts the story of Nazi resistance from within the Ghetto. After the establishment of the Warsaw Ghetto, a band of writers and scholars named “Oyneg Shabes — the Joys of Shabbat” began to smuggle reports of atrocities to the outside world and to document the life and culture within the Ghetto in the hope that they would be remembered. Many of these documents were buried and only found after the conclusion of the war. Only three members of the Oyneg Shabes survived the war.

"Who will write our history? Sam Kassow! A brilliant historian, he recounts the riveting and largely forgotten tale of Oyneg Shabes, a surreptitious band of writers and scholars who joined together in the Warsaw Ghetto to chronicle daily life under Nazi occupation," Lansky said in a release. "As liquidation neared, they buried their papers in milk cans and tin boxes. Only three members of the original group survived the war, and it took them more than a year to persuade fellow survivors to start digging. Through meticulous research, Professor Kassow has excavated those papers for a second time, and, through her powerful documentary, filmmaker Roberta Grossman shares them once again.”

Lansky is the founder and director of the Yiddish Book Center, an organization formed in 1980 to help salvage Yiddish Language publications. Starting with a small number of books, the Center has grown into the world's largest collection of Yiddish books, with more than 1.5 million titles.

IF YOU GO

'Who Will Write Our History'

What: Benefit screening with author Sam Kassow and the Yiddish Book Center's Aaron Lansky. This documentary film is based on Kassow's book of the same name. Lansky will join Kassow for a conversation following the film. 

When: 6:30 p.m., May 14

Tickets: $100

Information and reservations: 413-528-8886, thetriplex.org

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