*IN YIDDISH* Simo Muir, "The History of Jews in Finland as seen through Yiddish Performances"
When and Where
Speakers
Description
Himel Family Yiddish Lecture Series
Co-sponsored by the Al and Malka Green Fund in Yiddish Studies
Simo Muir (Lund University)
"The History of Jews in Finland as seen through Yiddish Performances"
Muir will talk about the history of Jews in Finland, how the descendants of former Cantonist soldiers of Czar’s army became citizens of independent Finland, and how they ended up as brothers-in-arms with the Nazis during World War II. Muir will show how the Jewish community performed its own history on Yiddish stage and how they dealt through songs and sketches with their conflicting and precarious situation during the war.
Simo Muir is currently Senior Lecturer in Yiddish at the Lund University and Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the University College London Department of Hebrew and Jewish Studies. His PhD, 2004, dealt with the Yiddish dialect and culture of the Helsinki Jewish community, and since then he has published widely about the cultural history of Finnish Jewry. Muir’s current research deals with Yiddish culture among Holocaust Survivors in the Nordic Countries. His latest publications include “’Who Will Laugh the Last?’ Jac Weinstein’s Sketches, Poetry, and Songs during Finnish-German Co-Belligerency, 1941-44”, Jewish Social Studies, 2/2022, and “’We Will Live Forever’: Music of the Surviving Remnant in Sweden”, in Oxford Handbook of Jewish Music Research, 2023.