On the Waves of Ether: Yiddish Language Programming on Polish Radio, 1945-1958

The Aleksander and Alicja Hertz Memorial Fellowship and the Samuel and Flora Weiss Research Fellowship in Polish Jewish Studies

The first time a Yiddish radio program was broadcast in Poland was on a station out of Lublin, on January 6, 1945. These Yiddish programs, created by Jonas Turkow and his wife, Diana Blumenfeld, provided news about the fates of Poland’s Jews and played a central role in helping survivors find their relatives. This material included artistic, literary and musical programs that included the participation of well-known Yiddish writers, poets, literary critics, celebrities and Yiddish theater actors. In this talk, Anna Rozenfeld discusses these programs, and why they were especially meaningful to survivors and Jews abroad.

About the Speaker

Anna Rozenfeld is the Aleksander and Alicja Hertz Memorial Fellowship and the Samuel and Flora Weiss Research Fellowship in Polish Jewish Studies at YIVO. She is an artist; researcher of Jewish history, Yiddish language and culture; journalist; translator; Yiddish language instructor and co-founder of theִ „ייִדיש לעבט” project (“Yiddish is Alive”). Until 2012 she hosted the Yiddish radio program Naye Khvalyes, broadcast by the Polish Radio External Service and currently works in the education department at the Museum of the History of Polish Jews and for the Center for Yiddish Culture in Warsaw. She is also the co-organizer of the New Jewish Music Festival and the arts editor for the quarterly magazine Tsvishn. She is the Chairwoman of the Audit Committee of the Czulent Jewish Association and of the Polish Association for Yiddish Studies.