ZOOM BOOK LAUNCH EVENT
Journey into the Land of the Zeks and Back: A Memoir of the Gulag
by Julius Margolin (Oxford University Press)
The first full English translation of a masterful Gulag memoir that preceded Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago by decades.
Panelists:
- Deborah Kaple, Princeton University (the author of Gulag Boss: A Soviet Memoir)
- Stefani Hoffman, Hebrew University (book translator)
- Leona Toker, Hebrew University (the author of Return from the Archipelago: Narratives of Gulag Survivors)
Chair: Eli Lederhendler, Hebrew University
HOST:
The Leonid Nevzlin Research Center for Russian and East European Jewry, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
A powerful, fine-grained account of war, occupation, and the Gulag from an extraordinarily gifted writer. Margolin vividly details the Eastern European world of Jews, Poles, Ukrainians, Belarussians, and others living in fear under the German and Soviet occupation of their countries. His searing description of Gulag servitude is a ghastly refresher on mass dehumanization and how it robbed prisoners of their identity, family, memories, health, and sanity.” - Deborah Kaple, Princeton University
This long-awaited English-language publication is a game changer in both Soviet studies and Jewish studies.”—Maxim D. Shrayer, editor of Voices of Jewish-Russian Literature.
Video recording of the event: