Commemoration of the 75th Anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising at Der Shteyn

Memorial Program Presented by the Congress for Jewish Culture, the Jewish Labor Committee, the Workmen’s Circle, and YIVO Admission: Free No reservation required.

View the 75th Anniversary Commemorative Booklet
(Also available through Kultur Kongres / Congress for Jewish Culture)

On Thursday, April 19, 2018 at 3:00pm, the Congress for Jewish Culture, the Jewish Labor Committee, the Workmen’s Circle, and YIVO will join together to commemorate and remember the bravery of the partisans of the Warsaw Ghetto. This annual gathering follows a tradition established in 1947 by Jewish partisans, ghetto fighters and Holocaust survivors at the site earmarked by the City of New York for a memorial to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. It has become an annual gathering of Bundists and members of the secular, progressive Yiddish cultural community, as well as children and grandchildren of the original attendees. The memorial will be led by Marcel Kshensky with a keynote by Dr. David Slucki of Charleston College, author of The International Jewish Labor Bund After 1945: Toward a Global History, and will include remarks by Rivka Augenfeld of Montreal.

The program will also include readings of literary and eye-witness writings selected by poet and Warsaw Ghetto survivor Irena Klepfisz. Readers include Shane Baker, Nelly Furman, Ettie Goldwasser, Arthur Krystal, Agi Legutko, Allen Lewis Rickman, Moishe Rosenfeld, and Irene Dunkel Rivera among others.

The Hemshekh Chorus will sing Yiddish songs and lead attendees in the Partizaner himen and the Bundishe shvue. In the chorus are Joanne Borts, Sabina Bruckner, Francine Dunkel, Maida Feingold, Annette Harchik-Rosenfeld, Feygele Jacobs, Shifee Losacco, and Faye Ran.

Seventy-five years ago, Jewish resistance fighters in the Warsaw Ghetto—many in their teens and twenties—launched a sustained guerrilla battle in response to a planned Nazi mass deportation to the death camps.

They fought without hope of victory, but with the goal that they would not die in silence. They managed to hold off the German army from April 19th to May 16th. It was the largest single revolt by Jews during the Holocaust.

Their incredible heroism still resonates, and charges us to live lives that pay tribute to their resistance and sacrifice.

May their memories forever be a blessing and inspiration to us all.

This event takes place in Warsaw Ghetto Memorial Plaza in Riverside Park, west side of Riverside Drive between 83rd and 84th Street.