In the summer of 1948, amateur folklorist Ben Stonehill recorded more than 1,000 songs from Holocaust refugees who were being housed temporarily in the lobby of the Hotel Marseilles on New Yorkś Upper West Side. Stonehill’s efforts preserved for posterity a rich repertoire of songs in Yiddish as well as Polish, Czech and Hebrew. CTMD has created a special Stonehill Jewish Song Archive website to disseminate Stonehill’s recordings.

The Museum of Jewish Heritage, the Center for Traditional Music and Dance, and Yiddish New York present a special online multimedia program, in which Yiddish scholar Miriam Isaacs will reveal the inside story of Ben Stonehill’s heroic project, and share some of the remarkable performances Stonehill captured on wire recordings. Additionally, special guest musician Vladimir Fridman will perform songs from the Stonehill archive.  

Register for this program at https://mjhnyc.info/StonehillRecordings