Chava Rosenfarb – in memoriam

23.10.2011

Chava Rosenfarb

in memoriam

Chava Rosenfarb wrote her first poem when she was eight years old, in her hometown ofLodz,Poland. She developed her literary voice in the Lodz Ghetto during the Second World War. Later in the Nazi concentration camps, she continued to write poetry in her native Yiddish, scribbling the words on the ceiling above her bunk bed with a stub of a pencil. Chava managed to surviveAuschwitz and Bergen Belsen. After the war, she moved toMontreal. Yet even as she raised her family and built a new life, she was compelled to relive her old one, to bear witness to the Holocaust and its effect on her belovedLodz and its Jewish residents. Her life, her art, was dedicated not just to preserving those memories and the people who were lost, but to preserving Yiddish, the language of that lost era.

The documentary on Chava Rosenfarb was by Susan McKenzie in Montreal.

Play Audio Clip

http://www.cbc.ca/thelateshow/season-three/2011/07/11/episode-3—chava-rosenfarb—july-12-15

Biography

Chava Rosenfarb on Wikipedia

Chava Rosenfarb was granted an Honourary Degree of Laws during the University of Lethbridge’s 2006 Spring Convocation ceremony. Her convocation address is considered one of the most poignant presentations in the history of honourary degree ceremonies.