On April 25 at 7 PM, ET, Avinoam Patt, the Doris and Simon Konover Chair of Judaic Studies and Director, Center for Judaic Studies and Contemporary Jewish Life at the University of Connecticut, will discuss his new book, The Jewish Heroes of Warsaw: The Afterlife of the Revolt, published last year by Wayne State University Press. The program will take place under the auspices of The Gross Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies and will be delivered remotely via Webex. To register, please contact holgen@ramapo.edu.

Patt analyzes how the heroic saga of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was mythologized in a way that captured the attention of Jews around the world, allowing them to imagine what it might have been like to be there, engaged in the struggle against the Nazi oppressor. The timing of the uprising, coinciding with the transition to memorialization and mourning, solidified the event as a date to remember both the heroes and the martyrs of Warsaw, and of European Jewry more broadly. In particular, the book examines the ways the uprising was seized upon by Jewish communities around the world as evidence that Jews had joined the struggle against fascism, especially by the Zionist movement that debated how to best incorporate the doomed struggle into own narrative.

Avinoam Patt is the author of Finding Home and Homeland: Jewish Youth and Zionism in the Aftermath of the Holocaust (Wayne State University Press, 2009) and co-editor of a new volume Laughter After: Humor and the Holocaust (Wayne State University Press, 2020). Until July 2019, he served as the Philip D. Feltman Professor of Modern Jewish History at the Maurice Greenberg Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Hartford, where he was also director of the Museum of Jewish Civilization.  Previously, he worked as the Miles Lerman Applied Research Scholar for Jewish Life and Culture at the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM). He received his PhD in Modern European History and Hebrew and Judaic Studies from New York University.

For other information or to request disability-related accommodations for this event, please contact holgen@ramapo.edu.