Published: 9 January 2020
Last updated: 5 March 2024
MIGLĖ ANUŠAUSKAITĖ, A HEAVILY TATTOOED, 31-year-old Lithuanian cartoonist, is not Jewish. But in 2015, after winning an award for a comic book she created, she used her prize money to start studying languages, including Hebrew.
Her Hebrew teacher worked at the Lithuanian national library’s Judaica Research Centre and asked her if she wanted a job. “I still don’t know why,” Anušauskaitė said. “But I was interested.” At her new job, she encountered Yiddish. She decided to learn that, too.
Anušauskaitė lives in Vilnius, which has been nicknamed the “Jerusalem of the North.” It was the original home of the Yiddish Scientific Institute (yivo), an organization dedicated to the preservation of Jewish culture.
In 1939, yivo announced a contest for the “best Jewish youth autobiography,” open to young men and women between the ages of 16 and 22. First prize was 150 zlotys, or about US$30.
yivo clarified that the exercise was not technically a writing contest. Its aims were sociological: “We want to become fully aware of the life of the Jewish youth in these difficult days.”
FULL STORY Found in translation (New Yorker)
Photo: Miglė Anušauskaitė (supplied)
