Sari Sheinfeld

Beginning this month, the Emil A. and Jenny Fish Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies (director, Dr. Shay Pilnik) kicks off “What is the Holocaust Today? Contemporary Explorations,” a new multidisciplinary series on the Shoah’s everchanging and everlasting impact on our lives and the world in which we live. The inaugural program will be on Sunday, Feb. 13, 2022, at 4 p.m. ET with a presentation by Dr. Katarzyna Person on her new book, Warsaw Ghetto Police: The Jewish Order Service During the Nazi Occupation, followed by a panel discussion with three of the nation’s leading Polish-Jewish history scholars: Dr. Natalia Aleksiun, Dr. Glenn Dynner, and Yeshiva University’s Dr. Joshua Zimmerman (professor of history and Eli and Diana Zborowski Professorial Chair in Holocaust Studies and East European Jewish History). Sari Sheinfeld, a resident of Teaneck, New Jersey, and a student in the Fish Center’s Master of Arts in Holocaust and Genocide Studies, is the series’ designer, and YU News caught up with her to talk about her work and hopes for the new program.

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Congratulations on the start of what looks like a fascinating series. How did you become involved with the Fish Center?

I had been looking into master’s programs for Holocaust and genocide studies as well as talking about this with friends and colleagues, and so many people I know sent me emails, screenshots and photos of newspaper ads for the YU program as soon as it was advertised in the summer of 2020.

What is your role in the with the series?

My official role is as series designer. As a student employee, Dr. Pilnik asked me to dream up a series for the greater community and present it to him. Using a conversation we had had on our student WhatsApp group about Dr. Katarzyna Person’s new book on the Warsaw Jewish police as a launching point, Dr. Pilnik introduced me to Dr. Glenn Dynner at Sarah Lawrence College, who works with Dr. Person and connected me with her. I thought back to one of the very first classes I took at the center, Cultural Responses to the Holocaust, taught by Dr. Pilnik. In that class, we surveyed a variety of disciplines in which the Holocaust was a seminal event, such as literature, film, museology, memory, law, art, psychology and so on. The richness of the disciplines we explored left me awestruck and inspired. I wanted to create a series that demonstrated the width and breadth of the impact of the Holocaust modeled after the interdisciplinary approach of Dr. Pilnik’s class and current lessons of the Holocaust in the 21st century. A talk by Dr. Person, followed by a panel of leading historians of Polish Jewry, would create a centerpiece for the historiographical portion of the series. With the support of Dr. Pilnik and the Fish Center, I reached out to Holocaust professionals who are leaders in their fields and are doing important work. Upcoming segments will include representatives from the fields of museology, public memory, site preservation and journalism.

What do you find satisfying about the work?

I am the grandchild of Holocaust survivors. My grandparents spent their lives working to rebuild a world that was entirely lost. Their survival ensured that I could be here today to continue their work of survival and of remembrance. I am doing this for them and to help educate our future generations who never knew them. Education is a tool for ensuring history does not repeat itself and to help preserve the truth of what happened, and I want to be a part of that.

What is something you learned in doing this work that shocked or surprised you?

Growing up amidst survivors, I was still surprised how little I knew. Even as I near the end of my degree, it has shown me how much there still is to learn.

Why should people tune in to this series?

This series is a unique opportunity to hear from premier scholars and professionals across the globe without having to sign up for a master’s degree! They will see how the field is still growing and changing as society evolves and governments change. I want people to come away feeling like they learned something as well as being inspired to continue learning more.