How a Trove of Yiddish Letters Led to a Journey of Discovery

Talk and Book Signing with Dr. David Slucki, Ph.D. Q & A with Dr. Holli Levitsky, Ph.D.

A year after his father’s untimely death while visiting Los Angeles, David Slucki, a native of Melbourne, Australia, was handed a cache of Yiddish letters written by his grandfather to a brother in LA after the Holocaust.

Fortunately for David, he could understand them!

Because these 30 years of letters opened up a channel to discovering buried family histories and the keys to understanding David’s own father . They also helped him grapple with the haunting nature of this ancestral history.

David Slucki’s 2019 book, which will be available for purchase, Sing This at My Funeral – A Memoir of Fathers and Sons is a unique story and an innovative approach to writing both history and family narrative.

David Slucki is the Loti Smorgon Associate Professor in Contemporary Jewish Life and Culture at the Australian Center for Jewish Civilization, Monash University. From 2013-2019 he was an assistant professor in Jewish Studies at the College of Charleston, South Carolina. He is also the author of The International Jewish Labor Bund After 1945. Find out more about him here.

Holli Levitsky is Professor of English and Director of Jewish Studies at Loyolla Marymount University, LA, and Affiliated Professor at the University of Haifa. She is also Co-Director of the Jewish American and Holocaust Literature Symposium.