Ver Vet Blaybn? (Who Will Remain?)

The Initiative in Holocaust, Genocide, Memory Studies is honored to host three incredible speakers and one incredible film on the occasion of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, 27th January, 2021, 2-4pm Central US Time, over zoom.

Topic: Sutzkever

From 2-3 we will screen the film Ver Vet Blaybn? (Who Will Remain?) which traces the story of the amazing Yiddish poet Avraham Sutzkever. From 3-4 we will first hear from Sutzkever’s granddaughter Hadas Kalderon, then filmmaker Christa P. Whitney, and then Sutzkever scholar Justin Cammy. After these speakers, we will open up to Q & A from the audience.

Hadas Kalderon is the granddaughter of renowned poet Avraham Sutzkever. She is an actress, theatre maker, playwright and director who is currently serving as the Artistic Director of the National Youth Theatre. Hadas is also an Associate Producer of the multiple award-winning documentary Black Honey, the Life and Poetry of Avraham Sutkever. Most recently, she served as Associate Producer of the film “Who Will Remain?”, about her journey to Vilnius, following her grandfather’s footsteps

Christa P. Whitney is the director of the Yiddish Book Center’s Wexler Oral History Project, a growing collection of more than 1,000 in-depth video interviews about Yiddish language and culture with people of all ages and backgrounds. Originally from Northern California, she became interested in Yiddish while studying comparative literature at Smith College. She has studied Yiddish language at the Vilnius Yiddish Institute as well as the Yiddish Book Center. For the past ten years, she has traveled near and far in search of Yiddish stories, gaining skills in filmmaking, video production, and archival preservation along the way. Her latest documentary film, Ver Vet Blaybn? (Who Will Remain?) follows one woman’s journey to understand her grandfather, the Yiddish writer Avrom Sutzkever.

Justin Cammy is Associate Professor of Jewish Studies and of World Literatures at Smith College. He is a literary and cultural historian with research and teaching interests in Yiddish literature and Eastern European Jewish history. He wrote the introduction to The Full Pomegranate (SUNY Press, 2019), a bilingual volume of Sutzkever poetry, and his translation of Sutzkever's Vilna Ghetto, first published in 1946, will appear later this year with McGill-Queens University Press.