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November 19th, 2002 at 6:30 PM The 60th anniversary of the
assassination of Bruno Schulz |
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BOOK LAUNCHING
By
Henryk Grynberg
Penguin
Books
Regions of the Great
Heresy, Bruno Schulz: A Biographical Portrait
By Jerzy Ficowski
W.W. Norton & Co.
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FILM, WORLD PREMIERE
by Benjamin Geissler
For
Immediate release
The Center for Jewish
History
15 West 16th
Street, NYC 10011
Program information:
212-294-8314
Reservations: 917-606-8200
PROGRAM & PANEL
The Center for
Jewish History dedicates
A TRIBUTE TO
BRUNO SCHULZ
Commemorating
the 60th anniversary of the death of Bruno Schulz,
the
renowned Polish/Jewish visionary author and painter who was killed in the
Holocaust.
NOVEMBER 19, 6:30 PM-10:30 PM
THE CENTER FOR JEWISH HISTORY
Reservations: 917-606-8200 Program
information: 212-294-8314
Presented by: The
Center for Jewish History, The Jewish Heritage Project, and YIVO Institute for
Jewish Research. In association with: Goethe-Institut New York, The Polish Cultural
Institute, NY, The Institute for the Humanities at New York University, PEN American Center
PROGRAM
6:00 PM – VIRTUAL EXHIBIT. The life and visual
work of Bruno Schulz with images from the archive of YIVO and the academy of
Literature in Warsaw, Poland.
6:15 PM –
VIDEO SCREENING "Street of
Crocodiles," an animation by the Quay Brothers.
7:00 PM – READING, BOOK PRESENTATION, ROUNDTABLE
Bruno
Schulz: His Life, Work, World and Afterlife
Host and Moderator:
Alan Adelson. Mr. Adelson is the Executive Director of the Jewish Heritage
Project, sponsor of the International Initiative in the Literature of the
Holocaust.
Participants:
Henryk
Grynberg, author, "Drohobycz, Drohobycz" (Penguin Books).
Henryk Grynberg's
writing has been acclaimed throughout Europe where he has been short-listed
three times for the Nike Award, Poland's highest literary honor. His most acclaimed titles include "The
Children of Zion," "The Jewish War," and "Memorbuch."
Theodosia Robertson,
editor and translator, "Regions of the Great Heresy, Bruno Schulz: A Biographical
Portrait" (W.W. Norton & Co.)
Lawrence Wechshler,
Lawrence Weschler
recently resigned after twenty years as a staff writer at the New Yorker to
become director of the NY Institute for the Humanities at NYU. His reprotages
from Poland have been collected in the anthology "The Passion of
Poland".
Readings by film
and Broadway actress Elzbieta
Czyzewska
8:30 PM – FILM World
Premiere. "Finding
Pictures" by Benjamin Geissler. Mr. Geissler is the film maker who
discovered Bruno Schulz’s murals and followed their fate from the time of
discovery to their sudden disappearance from Drohobycz in one of the most
controversial museum acquisitions of recent years. A short talk with the
director, Benjamin Geissler will follow.
For Immediate release
The Center for Jewish
History
15 West 16th
Street, NYC 10011
Program information:
212-294-8314
Reservations: 917-606-8200
BOOK LAUNCHING
Regions of the Great Heresy
By Jerzy Ficowski
Translated and Edited by Theodosia Robertson
“Bruno Schulz was one of the great writers…[his]
verbal art strikes us – stuns, even – with its overload of beauty.”
-- John Updike
In the years since his
tragic death in the streets of Drohobycz, the Polish town where he was Born,,
Bruno Schulz (1892 – 1942) has been the subject of intense curiosity and
speculation. Writers like Cynthia Ozick and Philip Roth have kept the interest
in Bruno Schulz alive through their portrayals of the inscrutable author. When
Israeli officials removed his artwork from Ukraine in 2001 and transported it
to Israel, Schulz became the subject of front-page controversy in newspapers
around the world.
Now,
exactly sixty years since his death, publication of REGIONS OF THE GREAT HERESY is a cause for literary celebration. In
it, the Polish poet Jerzy Ficowski, widely regarded as the world’s foremost
authority on Schulz, reconstructs the enigmatic life story of this prodigiously
gifted man.
REGIONS OF THE GREAT HERESY
was first published in Polish, as a series of biographical portraits of Bruno
Schulz. This complete edition, translated and with a foreword by Theodosia
Robertson, is the first American edition of the book. Included are
reproductions of many of Schulz’s paintings and personal letters, provided by the
Schulz estate. The book also presents information on the fate of the missing
novel Messiah.
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Born
in 1892 in the small Polish town of Drohobycz, in which he would spend most
of his life, Schulz earned his keep teaching art to young students. His short
stories and is darkly erotic were first sent out only to his close friends.
His talent, however, was soon recognized and his writings began circulating
in Polish literary circles and were eventually published, to international
acclaim. In his story collections, The
Street of Crocodiles and Sanatorium
Under the Sign of the Hourglass Schulz employs a baroque poetic style
with a stunning, surrealistic edge, portraying a world torn between the
traditions of the shtetl and the
harsh realities imposed by modern society. As his fame grew, Schulz struggled
to write The Messiah, the novel that was to be his masterwork. The tragic disappearance of this, his
final work, which Ficowski discusses in REGIONS
OF THE GREAT HERESY in considerable detail has seized the literary
imagination of a generation of writers and is still the subject of intense
speculation and. |
Schulz, however, did not live to complete his work. The Nazis
occupied Poland in the fall of 1939. Schulz was first placed under the
protection of a Nazi officer who obliged him to paint fairy tale figures on the
walls of his son’s bedroom. Caught in an escalating feud between his protector
and another Nazi official, Schulz was shot on November 19th 1942.
With
unique insight, REGIONS OF THE GREAT
HERESY examines Schulz’s
extraordinary life and imaginative world. Jerzy Ficowski’s book is a work of
invaluable literary heritage.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Jerzy Ficowski is one of Poland’s
leading poets, essayists, and translators. Renowned for his work in
resurrecting the works of Bruno Schulz, Ficowski is also the author of one of
the most distinguished histories of the gypsies of Eastern Europe. He lives in
Warsaw.
Theodosia Robertson is a scholar of Slavic
languages and literature who has specialized in Polish literature and
culture. She teaches at the University
of Michigan at Flint.
Regions of the Great Heresy was
developed for publication by the Jewish Heritage Project’s International
Initiative in the Literature of the Holocaust.
For
Immediate release
The
Center for Jewish History
15 West 16th
Street, NYC 10011
Program information:
212-294-8314
Reservations: 917-606-8200
BOOK LAUNCHING
Drohobycz, Drohobycz
And Other Stories
True
Tales from the Holocaust and Life After
By Henryk Grynberg
“An attempt to bring to life
innumerable Jewish existences lost in
the Shoah.
The passion of the author deserves a large readership in many
languages and
countries.” — Czeslaw Milosz
“Grynberg is one of the most
articulate witnesses to the Holocaust.
His writings
convey to today’s audience the meaning of these exceptionally dark times
as few
other documents and literary works have managed to do.”
— Jan T. Gross, author of Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish
Community in Jedwabne, Poland, A Finalist for the National Book Award and the
National Book Critic’s Circle Award.
“With every new book Grynberg confirms his original
and powerful literary
talent… I am truly and
profoundly convinced that the publishing of Drohobycz,
Drohobycz
in the U.S. will be a major literary event.”
— Ryszard Kapúsciñski, author
of The Shadow of the Sun
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For
Jewish History month this year, Penguin is proud to publish thirteen stories
from preeminent Polish writer, Henryk Grynberg. In DROHOBYCZ, DROHOBYCZ AND OTHER STORIES: True Tales from the Holocaust
and Life After (Penguin Paperback
Original) Grynberg weaves haunting, authentic tales of the Holocaust,
including the riveting title story, which reconstructs the assassination of
the celebrated writer and artist Bruno Schulz. In each of these stories, it is not only the devastation of the
Holocaust that resonates so clearly, but also the trauma that endures among
its victims and survivors today.
Going beyond individual crime and punishment, Grynberg explores
collective guilt and the impunity of the twentieth century’s two most
genocidal political systems—Nazi Germany and Stalinist Soviet Union—in a profound
investigation of bravery, baseness, and vulnerability. |
DROHOBYCZ, DROHOBYCZ
was shortlisted for the NIKE
Award, Poland’s Highest literary prize
November 19, 2002
will mark the 60th
Anniversary of the assassination of Bruno Schulz
DROHOBYCZ,
DROHOBYCZ was developed for publications by the Jewish Heritage Project’s International Initiative in Literature of
the Holocaust
About the Author:
Henryk Grynberg is the author of twenty-five
works of fiction, poetry, essays, and drama, and has been the recipient of many
Polish literary prizes. After surviving the Holocaust, he sought refuge in the
United States because of Poland’s anti-Semitic campaign and censorship of his
writing. He lives in McLean, Virginia.
For
Immediate release
The
Center for Jewish History
15 West 16th
Street, NYC 10011
Program information:
212-294-8314
Reservations: 917-606-8200
FILM
Bilder
finden – Finding Pictures
(Germany, 2002, 106
min. color, 35 mm , stereo)
a film by Benjamin
Geissler
Synopsis
“Poetry
happens when short circuits of sense occur between words”—Bruno Schulz
Bruno Schulz, the world-renowned writer and painter and a Polish
Jew, experienced the terror of German occupation in the Galician city of
Drohobycz in 1941-42. He initially survived by painting frescoes for the
children of the SS officer Felix Landau, on the walls of the villa they had
occupied.
Bruno Schulz was shot and killed by the SS on November, 19, 1942.
Despite an intensive search after WWII, his frescoes were not found until
February 9, 2001 when, the documentary filmmaker Benjamin Geissler discovered
the long lost pictures. In May 2001 representatives of the Yad Vashem in
Jerusalem removed fragments of these murals from Ukraine, sparking an
international controversy.
The search for the murals, their discovery, and local reactions to
their removal have been meticulously documented on film by Benjamin Geissler.
In his film Geissler has also recorded some new testimonies about Bruno Schulz
and his last days.
“Geissler’s documentary enables viewers to follow the filmmaker
through a process of discovery and loss. That controversy continues to swirl
around the work of Bruno Schulz is no surprise. His fictional vision as well as
his very life were embedded in issues which continue to resonate in a world now
all too close to Schulz’s most fearful visions.”—Alan Adelson.
ABOUT THE DIRECTOR:
Benjamin
Geissler was born in 1964 in Germany. He began his career as a film and
documentary editor working on films of
the caliber of "Broadway Bound" by Neil Simon, "Simple Men"
by Hal Hartley, "Bad Lieutenant" by Abel Ferrara. Geissler went on to
produce his own documentaries and specializing in long-term research projects.
His works include "Vincenzo Floridia or the last Rose of Noto" (1994), "Time Warp" (1997), and
“Finding Pictures” (2002). Geissler lives and works in Hamburg.
A Benjamin Geissler Filmproduktion
with financial support by
Filmförderung Hamburg
kulturelle Filmförderungdes
Bundes (BKM)
Mitteldeutsche
Medienförderung
kulturelle Filmförderungdes
Mecklenburg – Vorpommern.
In co-operation with arte /
mdr