The Jewish Federation of the Berkshires presents Knosh & Knowledge with Peter Filkins, the Richard B. Fisher Professor of Literature at Bard College at Simon’s Rock, who will discuss author H.G. Adler’s Shoah Trilogy.
Born in Prague, H.G. Adler (1910-1988) was a survivor of Theresienstadt, Auschwitz, and two other concentration
camps. He wrote one of the earliest and most important works of Holocaust scholarship, Theresienstadt 1941- 1945 – The Face of a Coerced Community, published in 1955. In addition, he was an accomplished novelist and poet. Three of his novels, Panorama, The Journey, and The Wall, form the only trilogy in German by a direct survivor of
the camps. With their translation by Filkins into English, Adler has been rediscovered as a writer and scholar. Professor Filkins will share selections from his translation of the novels and talk about their significance, as well as
talk about Adler’s life and the reasons why Adler’s work was neglected for decades, despite his having published 26 books of fiction, poetry, and scholarship. Filkins will also share what it has been like to work on his biography of Adler, which will be published by Oxford University Press.
Peter Filkins is the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship, a Berlin Prize, a Leon Levy Center for Biography Fellowship,
and a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship. His poems, translations, and essays have appeared in the New York Times Book Review, Paris Review, Poetry, The New Republic, and numerous other publications
Advanced lunch reservations required by Thursday, August 13 before noon.
Cost: $11 includes program and farm fresh buffet lunch from Freund's Farm Market and Bakery. Program only is $5.