’Putting people front and centre’: Historian Anna Shternshis keeps Holocaust survivors’ stories alive

Anna Shternshis, director of the Anne Tanenbaum Centre for Jewish Studies, explores Jewish history through the long-lost songs of Holocaust survivors For University of Toronto historian Anna Shternshis , understanding the past means connecting with people's stories - or, in the case of her research, their songs. Shternshis, director of the Anne Tanenbaum Centre for Jewish Studies and the Al and Malka Green Professor of Yiddish Studies in the department of Germanic languages and literatures in the Faculty of Arts & Science, examines Jewish culture in Russia and the Soviet Union through oral history and Yiddish culture, music and theatre. Her 2018 project Yiddish Glory: The Lost Songs of WWII , highlights forgotten Yiddish music written during the Holocaust in the former Soviet Union. Shternshis collaborated with Russian songwriter and performer Psoy Korolenko to contextualize archival material, bringing together a global ensemble of musicians to produce a Grammy Award-nominated album. The resulting songs reveal how Jews fought against fascism, tried against all odds to save their families and expressed themselves through music. Shternshis, who serves as special adviser on community engagement to the dean of the Faculty of Arts & Science, has continued this work, most recently collaborating with the BBC for a radio documentary exploring the long-lost wartime songs of survivors who escaped the Holocaust by fleeing to Central Asia. She spoke to Josslyn Johnstone at the Faculty of Arts & Science and Tabassum Siddiqui at University of Toronto News prior to the International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust about how survivors' stories still resonate today.