Hannah Pollin-Galay's Books

Ecologies of Witnessing

Language, Place, and Holocaust Testimony

By: Hannah Pollin-Galay

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Ecologies of Witnessing

Language, Place, and Holocaust Testimony

By: Hannah Pollin-Galay

An innovative reassessment of Holocaust testimony, revealing the dramatic ways in which the languages and places of postwar life inform survivor memory This groundbreaking work rethinks conventional wisdom about Holocaust testimony, focusing on the power of language and place to shape personal narrative. Oral histories of Lithuanian Jews serve as the textual base for this exploration. Comparing the remembrances of Holocaust victims who remained in Lithuania with those who resettled in Israel and North America after World War II, Pollin-Galay reveals meaningful differences based on where survivors chose to live out their postwar lives and whether their language of testimony was Yiddish, English, or Hebrew. The differences between their testimonies relate to notions of love, justice, community—and how the Holocaust did violence to these aspects of the self. More than an original presentation of yet-unheard stories, this book challenges the assumption of a universal vocabulary for describing and healing human pain.

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350

Publisher

Yale University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0300235534

ISBN 13

9780300235531

Ecologies of Witnessing

Language, Place, and Holocaust Testimony

By: Hannah Pollin-Galay

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Ecologies of Witnessing

Language, Place, and Holocaust Testimony

By: Hannah Pollin-Galay

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

350

Publisher

Yale University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0300235534

ISBN 13

9780300235531

Occupied Words

What the Holocaust Did to Yiddish

By: Hannah Pollin-Galay

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Occupied Words

What the Holocaust Did to Yiddish

By: Hannah Pollin-Galay

The Holocaust radically altered the way many East European Jews spoke Yiddish. Finding prewar language incapable of describing the imprisonment, death, and dehumanization of the Shoah, prisoners added or reinvented thousands of Yiddish words and phrases to describe their new reality. These crass, witty, and sometimes beautiful Yiddish words – Khurbn Yiddish, or “Yiddish of the Holocaust” – puzzled and intrigued the East European Jews who were experiencing the metamorphosis of their own tongue in real time. Sensing that Khurbn Yiddish words harbored profound truths about what Jews endured during the Holocaust, some Yiddish speakers threw themselves into compiling dictionaries and glossaries to document and analyze these new words. Others incorporated Khurbn Yiddish into their poetry and prose. In Occupied Words, Hannah Pollin-Galay explores Khurbn Yiddish as a form of Holocaust memory and as a testament to the sensation of speech under genocidal conditions. Occupied Words investigates Khurbn Yiddish through the lenses of cultural history, philology, and literary interpretation. Analyzing fragments of language consciousness left behind from the camps and ghettos alongside the postwar journeys of three intellectuals—Nachman Blumental, Israel Kaplan and Elye Spivak—Pollin-Galay seeks to understand why people chose Yiddish lexicography as a means of witnessing the Holocaust. She then turns to the Khurbn Yiddish words themselves, focusing on terms related to theft, the German-Yiddish encounter and the erotic female body. Here, the author unearths new perspectives on how Jews experienced daily life under Nazi occupation, while raising questions about language and victimhood. Lastly, the book explores how writers turned ghetto and camp slang into art—highlighting the poetry and fiction of K. Tzetnik (Yehiel Di-Nur) and Chava Rosenfarb. Ultimately, Occupied Words speaks to broader debates about cultural genocide, asking how we might rethink the concept of genocide through the framework of language.

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Page Count

313

Publisher

University of Pennsylvania Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1512825913

ISBN 13

9781512825916

Occupied Words

What the Holocaust Did to Yiddish

By: Hannah Pollin-Galay

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Occupied Words

What the Holocaust Did to Yiddish

By: Hannah Pollin-Galay

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

313

Publisher

University of Pennsylvania Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1512825913

ISBN 13

9781512825916

Book's by Hannah Pollin-Galay

Ecologies of Witnessing

Ecologies of Witnessing

Ecologies of Witnessing

Ecologies of Witnessing

Occupied Words

Occupied Words

Occupied Words

Occupied Words

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