As a way of marking 100 years since the birth of the great Yiddish novelist and poet Chava Rosenfarb (1923-2011), the Polish city of Łódź — the city of her birth — has declared 2023 The Year of Chava Rosenfarb.

Rosenfarb was the recipient of numerous international literary prizes for her novels, mostly about the Holocaust, including the Itzik Manger Prize, Israel’s highest award for Yiddish literature, the Canadian Jewish Book Award and the John Glassco Prize for Literary Translation.

Rosenfarb was one of the few Holocaust survivors who transformed their experiences into works of fiction rather than memoirs. Her best known work, Der boym fun lebn (The Tree of Life), is about ten Jews from Łódź, and how they fared in the Nazi-run Łódź ghetto.

As part of the civic celebration of Rosenfarb, the philology department of the University of Łódź is organizing an international conference from Oct. 18 — Oct. 20 called “Chava Rosenfarb and Jewish Female Writers of the 20th Century.” The event will take place at the university itself.

Organizers are calling for papers in Polish and English about Rosenfarb and the work of other Jewish female writers from Łódź. Possible topics include the writings by Jewish women in the 20th century on social and political issues, and the languages these Jewish women wrote in to tell their stories.

Conference participants are encouraged to submit abstracts of up to 2,500 words and a short bio to chava@filologia.uni.lodz.pl. The abstracts are due by February 15.

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