Samuel Kassow on Rokhl Auerbach's "Warsaw Testament"

Samuel Kassow is interviewed by
Sholem Beinfeld about Rokhl Auerbach and her
book Warsaw Testament („וואַרשעווער צוואָות“), which Kassow
translated into English. The interview was by Zoom on May 30,
2025, with Kassow and Beinfeld at their homes in Connecticut
and Cambridge, MA, respectively.




Samuel Kassow is the Charles H. Northam Professor, Emeritus,
of History at Trinity College, and is recognized as one of
the world’s leading scholars on the Holocaust and the Jews of
Poland. Kassow was born in 1946 in a DP-camp in Stuttgart,
Germany and grew up speaking Yiddish. Kassow attended the
London School of Economics and Princeton University where he
earned a PhD in 1976 with a study about students and
professors in Tsarist Russia. He is widely known for his 2007
book Who Will Write Our History? Emanuel Ringelblum, the
Warsaw Ghetto, and the Oyneg Shabes Archive (Indiana
University Press). He was elected a Fellow of the American
Academy for Jewish Research, has won numerous awards, and has
lectured widely.




Sholem Beinfeld is co-editor-in-chief of the Comprehensive
Yiddish-English Dictionary and Professor of History,
Emeritus, Washington University, St. Louis. He translated The
Rudashevsky Diary, which was published as the November, 2024,
issue of The Jewish Quarterly.




Additional info on Warsaw Testament:


Publisher White Goat Press's page:
https://www.yiddishbookcenter.org/about/white-goat-press-0/rokhl-auerbach

Distributor page:
https://www.ipgbook.com/warsaw-testament-products-9798988677390.php





Music:


Hélène Engel: Yeder Ruft Mikh Zhamele from Voices Of The
Ghetto (Voix Du Ghetto): Warszawa, 1943

Intro instrumental music: DEM HELFANDS TANTS from Jeff
Warschauer: The Singing Waltz





Air Date: June 4, 2025