Jay Winter: Escaping the Holocaust: The Mir Yeshiva from Vilna to Shanghai and beyond
Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences
Interdisciplinary Research Seminar
Escaping the Holocaust: The Mir Yeshiva from Vilna to Shanghai and beyond
Professor Jay Winter
Charles J. Stille Professor of History Emeritus
Yale University
Date and Time: June 5, 2024 | 12:30-1:30 pm (HKT) / June 4, 2024 | 9:30-10:30 pm (PDT)
Venue: Lecture Hall at May Hall, HKU
Join us in person at May Hall or via Zoom using the following link: https://hku.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_hNs2z1qhTwaRc0xUoY0K2A
(Light refreshments will be served for those attending the seminar in person)
Abstract
During the Second World War the Nazis wiped out the world of Jewish scholarship centred in Talmudic academies or ‘Yeshivot’ in Europe. Remarkably, one academy survived intact. The Mir yeshiva was based in Byelorussia, but in 1939 fled Stalin to independent Lithuania. The outbreak of war put an end to Lithuanian independence, and placed the large Jewish world of Eastern Europe in an impossible situation, between Stalin and Hitler. This paper tells the story of how one Yeshiva escaped to China, keeping alive a way of life almost entirely extinguished elsewhere.
About the Speaker
Jay Winter is the Charles J. Stille Professor of History Emeritus at Yale University. He is a specialist on World War I and its impact on the 20th century. His first job was at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He then taught at Warwick, Cambridge, Columbia, and Yale, from which he retired in 2015. He is the author of many books, including Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: The Great War in European Cultural History; The Great War and the Shaping of the 20th Century; Rene Cassin and Human Rights; The Cultural History of War in the Twentieth Century and After, and The Day the Great War ended, 24 July 1923. He was a founder of the Historial de la Grande Guerre, Péronne, and served on its board of directors of its research centre for 30 years.
About the Series
This series aims to introduce a wide range of cutting-edge research in various disciplines and areas.