Book Talk – Paper Tombs, with Jennifer Rich
About this Event
In the years after the Holocaust, survivors created yizker bikher — memorial books dedicated to the towns and communities that had been destroyed.
In her book, Paper Tombs: Post-Holocaust Memorial Books and Prewar Jewish Life, Jennifer Rich explores these extraordinary works of collective memory. Though they are often dismissed as nostalgia, yizker bikher are powerful archives of Jewish life before the Holocaust and moving acts of remembrance created in its aftermath.
This talk explores how survivors used text, images, and community memory to reconstruct lost worlds, and why these books remain vital sources for understanding Jewish life, loss, and remembrance today.
About the speaker
Dr Jennifer Rich is the Executive Director of the Rowan Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Human Rights, and a Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Rowan University in Glassboro, New Jersey. Her research and teaching focus on Holocaust memory, Holocaust education, and the politics of teaching history in democratic societies.
She is the author of the forthcoming Paper Tombs: Post-Holocaust Memorial Books and Prewar Jewish Life (NYU Press, in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2026), Keepers of Memory: The Holocaust and Transgenerational Identity (Lexington Books, 2020), and Politics, Education, and Social Problems: Complicated Classroom Conversations (Palgrave, 2021).
Where is it happening?
Event Location & Nearby Stays:
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