Collecting Jewish Cultural Treasures in a Post-WWII New York Lobby

About

During the summer of 1948, only three years after the end of World War II, Ben Stonehill, a man devoted to Jewish culture, recorded recently-arrived Jewish survivors of the war who were temporarily housed in a hotel in upper Manhattan. The singers included men, women, and children. Stonehill collected over a thousand songs of many kinds: joyful as well as sad, mainly in Yiddish but also in Hebrew, Polish, and Russian. These songs are musical testimonies to the resilience of the survivors, a direct link to pre-war Jewish life in Eastern Europe, and a cultural treasure. The music and chatting that went on in between the songs tell not only of the singers' terrible traumas but also of their hopes, and reflect the sheer pleasure of reconnecting with others through song. In this talk, Isaacs describes the role of the Library of Congress in preserving this unique musical treasure. She plays some of these almost forgotten recordings and talks about the collector, the singers, and their times.

Archive

Library of Congress, in Library of Congress: talks and concerts

Licence or status

Rights statement at the Library of Congress, as the Library of Congress states it.

Credit

Library of Congress

Language

English

Country

United States

Who can watch

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