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<\/a>By Brendan W. Clark ’21<\/strong><\/p>\nEditor; History Major\u00a0<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n Kassow, who was born in a displaced persons\u2019 camp in Stuttgart, Germany. Kassow is a consultant to the Museum of History of the Polish Jews in Warsaw, Poland and is a well-regarded scholar of Ashkenazi Jewry. Kassow teaches on Jewish History, World War II history, and modern Russian history. His wife, Lisa, works as the director of Zach\u2019s Hillel House.<\/p>\n Kassow wrote his book about the incredible story of Emanuel Ringelblum, a young Jewish historian who worked to preserve the memory and the history of the Jewish people in Poland while interred in the Warsaw Ghetto during World War II. Ringelblum, who recognized that the ultimate goal of the Nazi regime was the very destruction of Jewish culture, sought to preserve the history of the Jewish people and bring attention to the atrocities of the Nazi regime by collecting personal correspondence, historical documents, and testimony from many of those in the Ghetto.<\/p>\n Ringelblum formed The Oyneg Shabes in late 1940, a group of more than 60 clandestine members who undertook the project during the ensuing years of the Ghetto\u2019s existence. In 1942, as the first rounds of deportations to concentration camps began, Ringelblum began to bury the archives throughout the Ghetto. Only three members of The Oyneg Shabes survived the war: Rachel Auerbach, the secretary of the organization Hersh Wasser, and his wife Bluma.<\/p>\n Portions of the archive were unearthed in 1946 under the direction of Wasser and contained more than 25,540 pages of documents: \u201cscholarly essays on hunger, women, and children in the Ghetto, photographs, poems, underground newspapers, armbands, invitations to a play at a Ghetto orphanage, food ration cards showing the starvation rations of the Ghetto\u2014a real-time, unfiltered record of Warsaw Jewry\u2019s struggle to survive in Hell,\u201d according to the documentary\u2019s website. Kassow\u2019s book brings new light to the largely forgotten archive; Wasser had campaigned for the archive\u2019s recognition for the remainder of his life.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen your enemy wants to destroy your culture, you are fighting for your memory,\u201d added Kassow, whose book has been published in eight languages. Who Will Write Our History? <\/em>has been lauded by many for its discussion an important narrative which defines, from the perspective of those who endured it directly, the struggle of the Jewish people throughout World War II. \u201cIt is a tale about why history matters and why it is worth dying for. It\u2019s the story of Emanuel Ringelblum and [the Oyneg Shabes Archive], the astonishing secret archives of the Warsaw Ghetto that was his creation,\u201d said Peter N. Miller in New Republic. <\/em><\/p>\n What makes this story unique is that Ringelblum, as a historian, understood that you can \u201cfight back against intolerance not just with weapons, but with a pen,\u201d said Kassow. The documentary Who Will Write Our History?, <\/em>based on Professor Kassow\u2019s book, is scheduled to be released in 2018.<\/p>\n The author owes a tremendous debt to the time of Professor Kassow for sitting down and discussing the book, the documentary, and the experiences of Ringelblum and those who lost their lives to the ineffable subjugation of the Nazi regime. For more information about the documentary, please visit <\/em>http:\/\/whowillwriteourhistory.com\/index.html<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Brendan W. Clark ’21 Editor; History Major\u00a0 Samuel Kassow, the Charles H. Northam Professor of History and a member of the Trinity College History Department since 1972 is presently involved in seeing his book Who Will Write Our History? materialize as a documentary film directed by Robert Grossman and executively produced by Nancy … Continue reading
\n<\/strong>Samuel Kassow, the Charles H. Northam Professor of History and a member of the Trinity College History Department since 1972 is presently involved in seeing his book Who Will Write Our History? <\/em>materialize as a documentary film directed by Robert Grossman and executively produced by Nancy Spielberg. In September of 2017, Adrian Brody signed on to serve as the voice of Ringelblum in the documentary.
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