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2007-10-02
Vilna Ghetto Posters Book Launch

The Vilnius Yiddish Institute provided two of the speakers at the book launch of Vilna Ghetto Posters (Yiddish title: Plakatn fun Vilner geto), held on 20 September at the Tolerance Center Premises of the Vilna Gaon Jewish State Museum of Lithuania. The book launch event was chaired by the museum’s director Ms. Markas Zingeris.

The book was compiled by three Vilnius scholars with close affiliation to the Vilnius Yiddish Institute: Yevgenia (Jenny) Biber, who was unfortunately unable to attend for health reasons, a native of Vilna and daughter of Israel Biber who once headed the city’s famed Yiddish Teachers’ Seminar; Rocha Kostanian, deputy director of the museum and head of its Green House (division for Holocaust exhibits); and Judita Rozina, a veteran of the first Vilnius summer program in 1998 (the year the program was relocated to Vilnius from Oxford, where it was founded in 1982).

The large folio Vilna Ghetto Posters volume comprises 372 pages and hundreds of full-color images, 83 of them in large format. These posters were produced in the Vilna Ghetto in 1942 and 1943 and reflect the remarkable extent to which the imprisoned remnant of Vilna Jewry pursued a vibrant cultural life. The posters announce concerts, sports events, educational programs and public lectures, synagogue services, and a variety of other cultural activities.

Among the speakers were the VYI’s librarian, Fania Brancovskaja, herself a Vilna Ghetto survivor. Fania showed the rapt audience copies of the lists of Ghetto residents in her possession, including herself and her immediate family (all of whom perished; she alone survived by escaping the Ghetto minutes before its final liquidation on Sept. 23 1943). The VYI’s director of research, Professor Dovid Katz, spoke briefly about the cultural background and internal diversity of the Ghetto’s population.

Pictured at the head table are, from right to left – Fania Brancovskaja (Vilnius Yiddish Institute, Lithuanian Jewish Comunity), Prof. Isroel Lempert (Lithuanian Jewish Community), Dr. Simon Alperovich (Lithuanian Jewish Community), Prof. Dovid Katz (Vilnius Yiddish Institute), Markas Zingeris (Vilna Gaon Jewish State Museum), Rachel Kostanian (Vilna Gaon Jewish State Museum), Dr. Arunas Bubnys (History Institute of Lithuania) and historian Aurimas Andriusis (Vilnius University).