Samuel Kassow Appointed YIVO’S Jacob Kronhill Visiting Scholar for 2016

New York, New York (January 18, 2016) – The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research is pleased to announce the appointment of Professor Samuel Kassow as the 2016 Jacob Kronhill Visiting Scholar in East European Jewish History.

Samuel Kassow is the Charles H. Northam Professor 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.

As the Jacob Kronhill Visiting Scholar, Professor Kassow will mentor graduate students and teach a spring semester course, Yiddish Literature of the Holocaust, beginning February 11. Professor Kassow is also be teaching YIVO’s first-ever online class, “Discovering Ashkenaz” (the flagship class for the Shine Online Educational Series at YIVO), available through April 30, 2016. The online course launched on January 11, 2016 and already 2,350 people from 46 countries have signed up to take it.

“It is a true privilege to have Samuel Kassow, a renowned scholar and teacher, come to YIVO as the 2016 Jacob Kronhill Scholar in residence.” 
—Jonathan Brent, Executive Director, YIVO Institute for Jewish Research

The Jacob Kronhill Visiting Scholar program at YIVO was established with a gift from the Kronhill Pletka Foundation, which was created by Irene Pletka in 2007 to honor the memory of her parents, Julia and Jacob Kronhill (Kronzylberg), who fled Poland in 1939. After spending the war in Japanese-occupied Shanghai, the family succeeded in reaching Australia, where they were active in Jewish community life, with Jacob particularly committed to Jewish welfare, increasing access to Yiddish education, freeing Soviet Jewry, and the defense of human rights.

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Ben Kaplan
Director of Education
(212) 294-6153