Robert Shapiro

Education:

Ph.D., Columbia University - 1987 (History)

M.Phil., Columbia University - 1975 (History)

B.A. (general and departmental honors), Johns Hopkins University - 1972 (History)

Areas of Expertise:

History and culture of the Jews in Poland, with emphasis on the 20th century, especially in the city of Lodz. Holocaust-era diaries and other contemporaneously written personal accounts, especially in occupied Poland and Lithuania. East European Jewish literature and folk culture, especially in Yiddish, Hebrew and Polish.

Books and Publications

Submitted completed annotated translation from Polish of Diary of the Lodz Ghetto, by Jakub Poznanski (Warsaw, 2002) to Indiana University Press for review for publication. (Books and Publications: Forthcoming Publications) 2012

Shapiro, Robert Moses and Tadeusz Epsztein. The Warsaw Ghetto Oyneg Shabes-Ringelblum Archive: Catalog and Guide. Translated from the Polish by Robert Moses Shapiro.
Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press (in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw, Poland). (Books and Publications: Edited Book) 2009

Łódź Ghetto: A History, by Isaiah Trunk, revised paperback edition. Ed., trans. and intro by Robert Moses Shapiro. Indiana University Press in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. (Books and Publications: Edited Book) 2008

The Warsaw Ghetto Oyneg Shabes--Ringelblum Archive Catalog and Guide translation and copyediting. Indiana University Press in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the Jewish Historical Institute of Poland. July 2009. (Books and Publications: Forthcoming Publications) 2008

Review of Erased: Vanishing Traces of Jewish Galicia in Present-Day Ukraine, by Omer Bar-Tov. Jewish Book World Quarterly. (Books and Publications: Book Review) 2008

Review of The Jews of Pinsk, 1506-1880, by Mordechai Nadav. Jewish Book World Quarterly. (Books and Publications: Book Review) 2008

Shapiro, Robert and Piotr Wrobe. Poyln: A Memoir of Polish Jewry, Volume 1, by Y.Y. Trunk. Translated from Yiddish by Anne Clark. University of Toronto Press. (Books and Publications: Edited Book) 2007

Awards, Honors and Fellowships

Accepted as participant in the POLIN Seminar of the new Museum of the History of the Jews in Poland in Warsaw, with sponsorship of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Education and Culture. July. (Grants and Fellowships) 2013

Fellow of the annual Yiddish Teachers Seminar, sponsored by the League for Yiddish, during the Yiddish-Vokh program. Baltimore, August. (Grants and Fellowships) 2011

Fellow of the Holocaust Education Foundation's Summer Institute on Holocaust and Jewish Studies, Northwestern University, June-July. (Grants and Fellowships) 2011

PSC-CUNY research grant, for released time from one course in Fall 2010 in connection with preparation of a translation of a Łódź ghetto diary originally written in Polish. (Grants and Fellowships) 2010

PSC-CUNY research grant, for research travel to Poland for a comparative study of Jewish ghetto leadership in Zagłębie (Eastern Upper Silesia) and Łódź. (Grants and Fellowships) 2010

Special Certificate of Merit, Society of American Archivists, in recognition of the signal contribution made through the publication of my book, The Warsaw Ghetto Oyneg Shabes-Ringelblum Archive: Catalog and Guide, co-edited by Tadeusz Epsztein and translated and edited from the Polish original by me, Washington, D.C., August 2010. The book was published in 2009 by Indiana University Press in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw, Poland, the repository of the Ringelblum Archive. (Awards and Honors) 2010

Tow Faculty Travel Fellowship, for research in Poland for a comparative study of Jewish ghetto leadership in Zagłębie (Eastern Upper Silesia) and Łódź. (Grants and Fellowships) 2010

PSC-CUNY Research Grant, to translate and edit the recently discovered Polish diary from the Lodz Ghetto by Rywka Lipszyc, in association with the Holocaust Center of Northern California and the Center for Jewish Research at the University of Lodz, Poland. 2009-10. (Grants and Fellowships) 2009

United States Embassy in Warsaw, Poland, provided me with a grant from Fulbright-Hays funding (at the request of the Center for Jewish Research at the University of Lodz) to cover my airfare and expenses for my two-week stay in Lodz in order to present several invited lectures in conjunction with the events of the commemoration of the 65th anniversary of the liquidation of the Lodz Ghetto in August 1944. Aug. 17-31. (Grants and Fellowships) 2009

Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture research grant, in support of a project to translate from Yiddish the Sonderkommando Documents Discovered in the Ash Pits at Auschwitz-Birkenau. (Grants and Fellowships) 2008

PSC-CUNY Research Grant, for Villain or Hero: David Gertler, Sonderkommando Chief of the Lodz Ghetto. (Grants and Fellowships) 2008

PSC-CUNY Research Grant, in support of a project to translate from German, Polish and Yiddish The Encyclopedia of the Litzmannstadt Ghetto that was compiled in the Lodz Ghetto during 1944. (Grants and Fellowships) 2008

Tow Faculty Travel Fellowship, for travel to Poland and Israel for a project to translate the Sonderkommando Papers found in the ash pits at Auschwitz-Birkenau. June-July. (Grants and Fellowships) 2008

ForeWord magazine's "Book of the Year Awards" Bronze Medal in the field of history for a work published in 2006 for Lodz Ghetto: A History, by Isaiah Trunk. Ed. and trans. Robert Moses Shapiro. Indiana University Press. (Awards and Honors) 2007

Lodz Ghetto: A History (Indiana University Press with the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum) was named a Choice magazine Outstanding Academic Title 2007. (Awards and Honors) 2007

Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture research fellowship, for preparation of translations of diaries from the Lodz ghetto written in Polish, Yiddish, Hebrew and German; research in Lodz, Poland, at the State Archive in Lodz and at the Jewish Community of Lodz, June. (Grants and Fellowships) 2007

PSC-CUNY Grant, for travel in connection with translation of the Encyclopedia of the Litzmannstadt Ghetto, a document created in German, Polish and Yiddish in the final months of the Lodz Ghetto in occupied Poland in 1944. (Grants and Fellowships) 2007

PSC-CUNY research fellowship, in support of project to prepare and publish translations of diaries from the Lodz ghetto: purchase of recent Polish publications, research in Israel and Poland, November-December 2006, January and June 2007. (Grants and Fellowships) 2007

Tow Faculty Travel Fellowship, for research on diaries from the Lodz ghetto during the Second World War; three weeks in Israel at Yad Vashem Library and Archive and the Jewish National University Library Institute of Manuscripts, January. (Grants and Fellowships) 2007

Research Activities

Attendee, dedication of the Zegota obelisk at the Holocaust Survivors Park in Lodz, Aug. 25. 2009

Invited guest to the opening of three exhibitions, on the Old Town neighborhood of Lodz, located in the courtyard of the building of the former Jarocinski Vocational Talmud Torah; on the destruction of Jewish communities in the Lodz region, displayed at the Museum of Polish Independence Movements; and on the Arie Ben-Menachem satiric album of photographic montage clandestinely prepared in the Lodz Ghetto. Aug. 24. 2009

Meeting with Michael Schudrich, the chief rabbi of Poland, to discuss the current state of Polish Jewry and the commemoration of Jewish history in Poland. Warsaw, Aug. 23. 2009

Meeting with the granddaughter and great-granddaughter of the late Dr. Jakub Poznanski, author of a Polish diary from the Lodz Ghetto that I have translated into English and am now annotating. I was given access to the family archive of photographs and documents, which I was permitted to photograph, Aug. 23. 2009

Visited the Museum of the City of Lodz, located in the former palace of Israel Kalmanovitsh Poznanski, where I located and studied the retrieved outdoor Sukkah mural originally located in the courtyard of Ezra Szykier, a major wine merchant and Jewish communal leader who died in 1920. Aug. 21. 2009

Consultant, Holocaust Center of Northern California, regarding the newly discovered anonymous diary from the Lodz Ghetto. Participated in authentication of the diary manuscript and planning for transcription, translation and eventual publication and exhibition of the diary by an anonymous young Jewish woman who wrote in Polish, Yiddish and Hebrew. 2008

A stay of 23 days in Lodz, Poland, to conduct research on the history of Jews in Lodz and the Lodz Ghetto imposed by the Germans during the Second World War, with special emphasis on ghetto diaries. June 4-26. 2007

Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums

"The Clandestine Warsaw Ghetto Oyneg Shabes-Ringelblum Archive in the Hersh Wasser Collection at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research" keynote address. YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, Center for Jewish History. The talk was part of a panel discussion with Professor David Engel (New York University). New York, April 7. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2013

"Lodz Ghetto Leader Rumkowski in Jakub Poznanski's Polish Diary of the Lodz Ghetto, 1939-1944." Annual Conference of the Association for Jewish Studies. Washington, D.C., December. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2011

"Making Bricks Without Straw: Yiddish and Hebrew at Brooklyn College in the 21st Century." Department of Modern Languages and Literatures' Symposium on Languages in Brooklyn. Brooklyn College, March 3. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2011

"Diaries From the Lodz Ghetto." Center for Jewish Research, University of Lodz. Aug. 25. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2009

"Lodz Ghetto Diaries and the Needs for Future Research." Lodz Ghetto Research Workshop, organized by the Center for Jewish Research of the University of Lodz. Aug. 30. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2009

"Looking for Lodz in the Oyneg Shabes-Ringelblum Archive of the Warsaw Ghetto." Center for Jewish Research, University of Lodz, Poland. Aug. 19. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2009

Interpreted and commented upon a Polish presentation on the Lodz State Archives holdings for Jewish genealogical research. Aug. 19. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2009

Lectured to students of the Center for Jewish Research of Lodz University during an excursion to the sites associated with Chelmno, the first operational Nazi German death camp on Polish soil. Aug. 20. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2009

Talk during which I revealed the previously unknown existence of a Polish diary from the Lodz Ghetto that was discovered in San Francisco, whose initially anonymous author has been tentatively identified as a young woman named Rywka Lipszyc, about whom more information is being sought. Lodz Ghetto Research Workshop, organized by the Center for Jewish Research of the University of Lodz. Aug. 28. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2009

"Lodz in Jewish History, Literature and Culture." Mala Litera Bookstore. Lodz, Poland, June 23. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2008

"Press During the Holocaust." Rabbi Herbert Tarr Institute of Jewish Studies. Roslyn Heights, N.Y., Nov. 6. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2008

"Why Didn't the Press Shout?" Kristallnacht Remembrance Program. Mt. Sinai Jewish Center. New York, Nov. 9. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2008

"'But Wasn't Everything Destroyed?': Primary Sources Reflecting the Lodz Ghetto." Annual Family History Seminar of the Jewish Genealogy Society of New York. Hebrew Union College. April 22. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2007

"Lodz and Its Jewish Community, 1800-2007" (in Yiddish). Lodz Jewish Community Center, to a visiting group from the Medem Library of Paris during their visit to Lodz, Poland. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2007

"Lodz Ghetto: A History." Holocaust Resource and Memorial Center, Queensborough Community College. Oct. 21. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2007

"Looking for Lodz in the the Ringelblum Archive of the Lodz Ghetto." New Perspectives on the Lodz Ghetto Panel, Association for Jewish Studies Annual Conference. Toronto, Dec. 18. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2007

"Poland and Jews." Alon Shvut Yeshiva. Jan. 16. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2007

"Poland in the Jewish Past and Present" lecture in Hebrew. Mofet Institute Seminar on the Place of the Holocaust in Various Sectors of Israeli Society. Herzlia, Israel, Jan. 14. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2007

"The Current Fashion of Jewish Tours to Poland, Some Critical Observations" lecture in Hebrew. Michlalah Jerusalem College Seminar for Israeli Guides Accompanying Tours to Poland. Jan. 9. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2007

"The Vaad Ha-hatsalah: Orthodox Jewish Rescue Committee, 1939-1945." Museum of Jewish Heritage. New York, Nov. 18. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2007

"YIVO's EPYC Curriculum and Website on East European Jewish Culture." Delivered to Wexner Foundation Fellows at the YIVO Institute of Jewish Research. New York, Nov. 13. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2007

Shapiro, Robert, Samuel D. Kassow and Joanna B. Michlic. "Lodz Ghetto Archives and the Clandestine Ringelblum Archive of the Warsaw Ghetto." Ghetto Archives in Occupied Poland Panel. YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. New York, Oct. 23. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2007

Shapiro, Robert, Yehuda Bauer, Israel Gutman, David Engel, Yitschak Mais and Judith Baumel Schwartz. "Popular History, Judaism and Resistance." Jewish Resistance During the Holocaust Symposium. Museum of Jewish Heritage. New York, Oct. 28. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2007

Professional Leadership

Anonymous peer reviewer, Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies, published by Purdue University Press. (Professional Leadership: Public Service) 2013

Member, On-site Evaluation Team for the National College Credit Recommendation Service of the University of the State of New York Regents Research Fund, which evaluated the programs of Pirchei Shoshanim, an innovative Jewish educational program of hybrid Internet courses for students all over the world, based in Lakewood, N.J. July. (Professional Leadership: Public Service) 2012

Member, Faculty Council Core Curriculum Committee. (Professional Leadership: Committee Service) 2011

Member, Faculty Council's Core Curriculum Committee. (Professional Leadership: Committee Service) 2010

Acting chairman, Judaic Studies Department, Fall. (Professional Leadership: Public Service) 2009

As a guest of the director of the Museum of the City of Lodz and curator of the new exhibition, "Secrets of the World of Hasidim," I toured the exhibit and provided commentary on how the exhibits displays. Aug. 21. (Professional Leadership: Public Service) 2009

Lectured in Hebrew to a group of Israeli and American seminary students from Kiryat Arba during their three-hour walking tour of Lodz and sites associated with the Nazi-imposed ghetto. Aug. 22. (Professional Leadership: Public Service) 2009

Departmental representative to Faculty Council (fourth year). (Professional Leadership: Committee Service) 2008

Member, Faculty Council Committee on the Core Curriculum (second year). (Professional Leadership: Committee Service) 2008

Member, Faculty Council Core Curriculum Committee. (Professional Leadership: Committee Service) 2007

Organized and chaired the Teachers Seminar on Polish-Jewish Relations at the Museum of Jewish Heritage, New York, co-sponsored with the Board of Jewish Education of Greater New York and the Forum for Dialogue Among Nations. May 9. (Professional Leadership: Public Service) 2007

Screening and discussion of the first feature film about Auschwitz, The Last Stop (Poland, 1947). Yom Ha-Shoah / Holocaust Commemoration. Brooklyn College. April 18. (Professional Leadership: Public Service) 2007

Pedagogical Achievements

Graduate course on "Archival Research in Yiddish Sources" at the Bard College-YIVO Institute on East European Jewish Heritage at the Center for Jewish History, New York, with participation of doctoral students from Germany, Israel and Russia. January. 2012

Chairman and organizer, YIVO EPYC Educators Seminar on East European Jewish Heritage, to be held at the Center for Jewish History in June 2009. 2008

Community Activities

"A Rosen by Any Other Name: Secrets of East European Jewish Family Names," Limmud Baltimore event. Johns Hopkins University. April 21. 2013

Participant, Lodz Jewish religious community's Hasidic "tish" in celebration of the beginning of the Hebrew month of Ellul. Aug. 20. 2009

Speech on the peculiar history of the Jews of the Zaglebie region in Poland, called East Upper Silesia by the Nazi Germans. Annual memorial meeting of the Sosnowitz-Bendiner Society at the Woodbury, N.J., Jewish Cemetery. My talk included a never-before translated Polish letter from the parents of a six-year-old Jewish child in hiding, a final communication from parents to their daughter on the eve of the parents' deportation to Auschwitz. Sept. 13. 2009

"Diaries From the Lodz Ghetto." Young Israel of Forest Hills. Queens, N.Y., April 15. 2007

"Hasidim, Mitnagdim and Other Jewish Revolutionaries in Eastern Europe." Sea Breeze Jewish Center. Brooklyn, N.Y., March 27. 2007

"Jewish Geography in Eastern Europe." Sea Breeze Jewish Center. Brooklyn, N.Y., March 13. 2007

"Like a Branch to a Root: The Israeli Poet Leah Nebenzahl." Netivot Shalom Congregation. Baltimore, April 15. 2007

"Secrets of Eastern European Jewish Family Names." Sea Breeze Jewish Center. Brooklyn, N.Y, March 20. 2007

Screening and discussion of In the Shadow of Your Wings: The Diary of Moshe Flinker (Israel, 2005), Baltimore Hebrew University, July 24. 2007

Other Professional Activities

Judaic Studies Department representative to the Brooklyn College Office of Assessment Workshops on Assessment Methods and Documentation. 2013

Bringing the Uriel Weinreich Summer Yiddish Program of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research to Brooklyn College, starting in summer 2013. The distinguished YIVO-Weinreich Program is the world's foremost intensive six-week Yiddish language program, established in 1968 at Columbia University. It will bring students from all over the world to Brooklyn, home to more than 200,000 native Yiddish speakers. It is intended to make the Weinreich Summer Yiddish Program a constituent program within the Judaic Studies Department at Brooklyn College from summer 2014. 2012

As Judaic Studies Departmental Library Representative, I revised the list of professional journal subscriptions at the Brooklyn College Library, finding significant savings through elimination of outdated subscriptions while applying a portion of the savings to institute subscriptions to several publications of value for the study of Brooklyn's Jewish communities. 2011

Dissertation fellowship proposal reviewer, Foundation for Jewish Culture. 2011

Outside reader, dissertation defense in the field of East European history, Yale University. 2011

Attendee and participant, various events associated with the commemoration of the 65th anniversary of the liquidation of the Lodz Ghetto, the last Nazi-imposed ghetto in Poland. Aug. 26-30. 2009

Attendee, Conference on the Attitudes and Policies of the London Polish Government-in-Exile and the Home Delegatura Toward Rescue of Jews. Law School of the University of Lodz. Aug. 28. 2009

Attendee, publication press conference held at the Radegast Station Memorial on the site of the embarkation of Lodz Jews sent to Chelmno and Auschwitz, for the publication of the new collection of Lodz Ghetto photographs, Getto Lodzkie, during which I met the regional director of the Institute of National Memory and the director of the Lodz State Archive, two of the most important repositories for my research. Aug. 26. 2009

Interviewed by Lodz Public Television about my research in Lodz and about the recently discovered, previously unknown Lodz ghetto diary of Rywka Lipszyc. Aug. 19. 2009

Meeting with Henryk Panusz, head of the Fundamentum Judaicum Lodzenses Foundation, with whom I discussed the retrieval of former Jewish property and the possible location of the library of the former chief rabbi of Lodz. Lodz Jewish Community Center in Poland. Aug. 26. 2009

Moderator, YIVO Institute Book Group session on Loving Kindness, by Anne Roiphe, at the Center for Jewish History. Feb. 5. 2009

Organizer and chairman, guest lecture on "Global Connections: Memoirs of a "Jewminicana'," presented by Aliza Hausman. Sponsored by the Judaic Studies Department with the Core Curriculum Director's Office and co-sponsored by Phi Beta Kappa, Honors College, Puerto Rico and Latino Studies Department, and the Women's Studies Program. March 17. 2009

Organizer and chairman, Third YIVO EPYC Educators Seminar on East European Jewish Heritage, held for four days at the Center for Jewish History, with participants from five countries and 10 states, including the associate director of the Judaic Studies Department at the University of Nanjing, China. Funded by the Israel Miller Fund for Holocaust Research and Education at the Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany and by the Taube Family Foundation for Jewish Life. June 22-25. 2009

Chairman, "Children, Family, and Gender and the Holocaust" session, Annual Conference of the Association for Jewish Studies, Washington, D.C., Dec. 22. 2008

External evaluator, University of Toronto, for the doctoral dissertation of Irena Kohn, "Material Cultural Sources From the Lodz Ghetto: Songs, Photographs and Stories." 2008

Moderator, YIVO Institute Book Group, discussing The Next World, by Dara Horn, Dec. 2. 2008

Organized and chaired "Testimonies of Child Survivors of the Holocaust, 1944-49," the Judaic Studies Departmental Seminar session with Dr. Boaz Cohen of Western Galilee Academic College. Nov. 4. 2008

Outside evaluator of research funding proposal for the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. 2008

Associate editor, new Toronto History of Polish Jews Series (University of Toronto Press). 2007

Book talk and interview in Polish with Joanna Podolska of Gazeta Wyborcza newspaper at the Księgarnia Litera book shop in Lodz, Poland, in connection with publication of my translation of Isaiah Trunk's Lodz Ghetto: A History (Indiana University Press, 2006). 2007

Led a three-week evening workshop in Yiddish language, sponsored by the Fundacjum Monumentum Judaicum Lodzense at the Jewish Community Center in Lodz, Poland, for graduate students engaged in research related to Jewish history. June. 2007

Outside evaluator of doctoral dissertation fellowship proposals for the National Foundation for Jewish Culture. 2007