Occupied Words: What the Holocaust Did to Yiddish with Hannah Pollin-Galay

Join Associate Professor Hannah Pollin-Galay of Tel Aviv University for an eye-opening exploration of how language can bear witness to history’s darkest moments. In her groundbreaking new book, Occupied Words: What the Holocaust Did to Yiddish (University of Pennsylvania Press, September 2024), Pollin-Galay introduces us to "Khurbn Yiddish"—the Yiddish of the Holocaust—revealing how Jews, amidst brutality and dehumanization, transformed their language to describe the unimaginable.

This class will delve into the words born out of ghetto and camp life—words like kripo, aktsie, and shaber, which would have been foreign to pre-1941 Yiddish speakers but became essential in the Holocaust’s aftermath. Through these linguistic innovations, Pollin-Galay illuminates how language became a tool for survival, resistance, and memorialization.

Discover how wartime lexicographers documented this linguistic shift in real time, and how writers like K. Tzetnik and Chava Rosenfarb turned ghetto and camp slang into literary art. We’ll explore themes of cultural genocide, resilience, and the profound connection between language and memory.

This class invites anyone interested in language, history, and the enduring human spirit to examine how words can carry the weight of survival and the legacy of loss.

Professor Pollin-Galay's book Occupied Words: What the Holocaust Did to Yiddish is available for purchase online.

Join us on Thursday, January 23 online at 7:00 p.m. Register to join us. Contact cajl@tisrael.org with questions.