YIVO and the Oyneg Shabes Archive: A Centennial Reflection
Tuition: FREE
This is a live, online course held weekly on Zoom. Students will receive a Zoom link after registering for the course here on the YIVO website. This course will be conducted in English.
The mini-course, organized by the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research and the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw, will explore the historical connection between YIVO and the Oyneg Shabes Archive – the secret archive organized by Emanuel Ringelblum in the Warsaw Ghetto.
Schedule
SESSION 1:
October 19, 2025 | 11:00am – 12:00pm ET
“Two and a Half Years of War” – The Oyneg Shabes Research Project and its YIVO Background
Instructor: Maria Ferenc Piotrowska
Maria Ferenc Piotrowska is a social historian of Polish Jews during the Holocaust. She works as Assistant Professor at the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw, where she coordinates the research project Encyclopedia of the Warsaw Ghetto. In 2021, she received her PhD from the University of Warsaw.
Dr. Ferenc Piotrowska has published several pieces, including a recent book based on her dissertation entitled “Każdy pyta, co z nami będzie”: Mieszkańcy getta warszawskiego wobec wiadomości o wojnie i Zagładzie [“Everyone asks what will become of us”: Inhabitants of the Warsaw Ghetto in the face of the news about war and the Holocaust] (2021). Maria's most recent article is “‘Each Day the Ghetto Has to Find Consolation in Something.’” “False News as Breaking News in the Warsaw Ghetto” (co-authored with Piotr Laskowski) appeared in Radical History Review. She has also published in Zagłada Żydów, Gal Ed, Media History, and Annales de démographie Historique, and she has edited three volumes of documents from the Ringelblum Archive of the Warsaw Ghetto.
In addition, Dr. Ferenc Piotrowska has been awarded fellowships from the European Holocaust Research Infrastructure, Yad Vashem, Fondation Memoire de la Shoah, Polish Ministry of Higher Education, and National Science Centre.
SESSION 2:
October 26, 2025 | 11:00am – 12:00pm ET
“YIVO Krayz” (YIVO’s Circle) in the Oyneg Shabes Group
Instructor: Eleonora Bergman
Eleonora Bergman is a historian at the Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw. She is a leading authority on the conservation of Jewish monuments in Poland. In recognition of her work on the preservation of Jewish heritage in Poland and for her work on the publication of the Ringelblum Archive, Dr. Bergman was awarded the Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur in France in 2012. Dr. Bergman is the author and co-author of more than twenty case studies on the history and preservation of Polish towns, including five books and more than sixty articles. Dr. Bergman has been at the Jewish Historical Institute since 1991 and was its Director from 2007 to 2011. Dr. Bergman has been awarded fellowships by the International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and the Restoration of Cultural Property, Rome, 1982; the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture in New York in 1993/1994 and 1996/1997; and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. in 1995. Dr. Bergman has authored and co-authored and curated exhibitions about the Ringelblum Archive in Germany, the US, France, and Spain. Since 2004, Dr. Bergman has been involved in preparing the complete publication of the Ringelblum Archive.
SESSION 3:
November 2, 2025 | 11:00am – 12:00pm ET
The Yiddish Identity of the Oyneg Shabes Group
Instructor: Agnieszka Żółkiewska
Agnieszka Żółkiewska is a Doctor of Humanities researcher at the Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw, a literary historian, and a translator from Yiddish. She is a recipient of a Kościuszko Foundation scholarship (2001/2002) for research at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York and a Foundation for Polish Science scholarship for young scientists (2007). She participated as a translator and editor in the project to complete the edition of the documents of the Underground Archive of the Warsaw Ghetto. Her publications include Words in the Night: Poetic Documents of the Holocaust (2012), Sejfer Nifles Hoze: The Book of Miracles of the Seer (2015, co-authored with Jan Doktór), Icchok Lejbusz Perec, Soul: Legends, Fairy Tales, and Stories (2015, co-authored with Monika Szabłowska-Zaremba), and The Ringelblum Archive. Literary Works from the Warsaw Ghetto (2017; co-author Marek Tuszewicki).
SESSION 4:
November 9, 2025 | 11:00am – 12:00pm ET
Milkhome Folklor (War Folklore) – The Oyneg Shabes Folklore Collection and its Creators
Instructor: Marek Tuszewicki
Marek Tuszewicki is a Deputy Director of the Institute of Jewish Studies, Jagiellonian University in Kraków. Much of his research and teaching focuses on the language and culture of Ashkenaz, particularly in their relation towards modernity. In 2014, he received a Ph.D. in History from the Jagiellonian University and a year later published the book: A Frog Under the Tongue: Jewish Folk Medicine in Eastern Europe (in Polish, later in English). He has also authored numerous articles devoted to Ashkenazi popular and medical culture, translations of Yiddish literature into Polish (including Mendele, Peretz, and Sutzkever) as well as his own book of Yiddish poetry Fun beyde zaytn shpigl.