On October 19, Nancy Sinkoff, Professor of Jewish Studies and History and the Academic Director of the Allen and Joan Bildner Center for the Study of Jewish Life at Rutgers University, discussed her latest book, From Left to Right: Lucy S. Dawidowicz, the New York Intellectuals, and the Politics of Jewish History, the first comprehensive biography of Dawidowicz (1915–1990), a pioneer historian in the field that is now called Holocaust studies. Dawidowicz was a household name in the postwar years, not only because of her scholarship but also due to her political views. Dawidowicz, like many other New York intellectuals, was a youthful communist, became an FDR democrat midcentury, and later championed neoconservatism. Nancy Sinkoff argues that Dawidowicz’s rightward shift emerged out of living in prewar Poland, watching the Holocaust unfold from New York City, and working with displaced persons in postwar Germany. Based on over forty-five archival collections, From Left to Right chronicles Dawidowicz’s life as a window into the major events and issues of twentieth-century Jewish life, and as vital link between the European and U.S. diasporas.
Please note the full recording of this event will be on our website until November 16.