Avrom Karpinovitsh (1918 – 2004) played a prominent role in the Israeli Yiddish literary scene, coming from a family of accomplished artists in Vilna. After surviving World War II in the Soviet Union and a British internment camp in Cyprus, he settled in Israel in 1949, becoming a founding member of the group Yung Yisroel and publishing celebrated stories set in pre-war Vilna, the Soviet Union, and Israel. One of his notable works titled "Don’t Forget," published in 1951, explores the experiences of Yiddish-speaking refugees and Holocaust survivors during the 1948 War, highlighting the interconnection between the traumas of the Holocaust and the War of Independence, a theme echoed in many Yiddish texts of the 1950s and 1960s, illustrating what Michael Rothberg termed "multidirectional memory."
Dr. Shachar Pinsker recently translated this text from Yiddish to English, unfurling its message to a much larger spectrum of people who will find it very relevant to our world today.
"The current events in Israel/Palestine that are unfolding, with no end in sight, since October 7, 2023, makes this powerful and disturbing story even more relevant than ever. This story raises questions of trauma, memory, and violence, of revenge and empathy, without giving clear answers. They are similar to many questions we ask today, as we filter the present through the past," says Dr. Pinsker.
