Feb. 7, 2024 | Event on Yale Campus: Meet the Producers of Remembering Vilna
Date: February 7, 2024 / 5:30 PM
Location: Luce Hall, Rm 203
34 Hillhouse Avenue, New Haven
Meet the people behind Remembering Vilna: the Jerusalem of Lithuania, the third installment of Those Who Were There: Voices from the Holocaust, a podcast from the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies. This latest 10-episode season of the podcast, which is produced in partnership with the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, brings to life the story of the destruction of Vilna’s vibrant Jewish community through recorded survivor testimonies and Herman Kruk’s extensive diaries.
Join co-producers Nahanni Rous and Eric Marcus, and the podcast’s host, Eleanor Reissa, and historical advisor Samuel Kassow, for a discussion about the podcast, during which they’ll share excerpts from the series.
The event, which is free and open to the public, will take place at Luce Hall, rm 203, at 34 Hillhouse Avenue on Yale's campus in New Haven. This event is co-sponsored by the Program in Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies at the Macmillan Center.
Remembering Vilna: the Jerusalem of Lithuania can be found at ThoseWhoWereThere.org or wherever you get your podcasts.
The Speakers:
Nahanni Rous
As lead producer of the series Remembering Vilna: the Jerusalem of Lithuania, Nahanni Rous listened to more than 60 testimonies of Vilna-born Holocaust survivors, and wove together the stories that make up the tapestry of experiences in this ten part audio documentary about Jewish life in Vilna leading up to, during and in the immediate aftermath of World War II.
Nahanni also hosts and produces Can We Talk?, the podcast of the Jewish Women’s Archive, which explores the intersection of gender and Jewish culture. She is a MacDowell fellow, an amateur cellist, and lives with her family in Washington, DC.
Eleanor Reissa
The host of the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimony’s Those Who Were There, Eleanor Reissa is a Tony Award nominated director; a Broadway actress (INDECENT); a television and film actress (HBO’s PLOT AGAINST AMERICA, AMC’s WALKING DEAD, and the upcoming series DIE ZWIEFLERS, for German television.)
She is an award-winning playwright, choreographer; and a critically acclaimed singer in English and Yiddish performing in every major musical venue in New York City and in festivals around the world. Her book, The Letters Project: A Daughter’s Journey was recently published by Post Hill Press. Learn more about Eleanor at www.eleanorrreissa.com.
Eric Marcus
Journalist and author Eric Marcus is co-producer of Those Who Were There, a podcast drawn from Yale University’s Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, including this third season of the podcast, Remembering Vilna: the Jerusalem of Lithuania. Eric is also the founder and host of the award-winning Making Gay History podcast, which mines his decades-old audio archive of rare interviews to bring LGBTQ history to life through the voices of the people who lived it.
Eric is the author and co-author of a dozen books, including Making Gay History, Is It A Choice?, Why Suicide?, and Breaking the Surface, the #1 New York Times bestselling autobiography of Olympic diving champion Greg Louganis.
Samuel Kassow
Samuel Kassow is the Charles H. Northam Professor of History at Trinity College. He holds a Ph.D. from Princeton University, and has been a visiting professor at many institutions, including Harvard University, University of Toronto, Hebrew University, Dartmouth College, and others. He served as lead historian for two of the galleries at Warsaw’s POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews from 2006 to 2013. Professor Kassow is the author and editor of a number of books, including Who Will Write Our History: Emanuel Ringelblum and the Secret Ghetto Archive (Indiana University Press, 2007).