Zisl Slepovitch Ensemble

The Museum of Jewish Heritage welcomes the Zisl Slepovitch Ensemble and Sasha Lurje to present a selection of songs that Dr. D. Zisl Slepovitch has discovered, curated, transcribed, and arranged working as a Musician-in-Residence at the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies at Yale University, a unique collection of 4,400 interviews conducted in the 1980s–2000s.

The songs in the program provide a series of insights into the Holocaust survivors’ experiences both during World War II and in the pre- and inter-war years as they were growing up in Eastern, Southern, and Central Europe. The compositions form a timeline that recreates a dynamic, multidimensional image of people’s lives and the multiple identities they carried — as Jews by faith and roots, and as citizens of different European countries. At the core of the program are the unique songs and poetry (some never publicly performed before) that ghetto and camp prisoners composed and performed during the Holocaust.

This event is co-presented by Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies at Yale University.