Bio

Jules Riegel (they/them) received their Ph.D. in Modern European History at Indiana University Bloomington in 2021. Their research interests include modern Polish-Jewish cultural history, the Holocaust, and music during war and genocide. Their scholarship has been supported by a Harry Starr Fellowship in Judaica at Harvard University’s Center for Jewish Studies; a Fulbright Institute of International Education Grant to Warsaw, Poland; and a Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies Sosland Fellowship at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, among others.

Their first book, In the Season of Hunger and Plague: Musical Life in the Warsaw Ghetto, is under preliminary contract with Cornell University Press. This project uses sources written and preserved by ghetto residents to reconstruct how music performance represented, reproduced, and contributed to the ghetto’s complex and contentious social and cultural dynamics. They have two future book projects in development. One examines gender, sexuality, and perceived collaboration in the camps and ghettos during the Holocaust. The other examines the Yiddish-language reception history of Ludwig van Beethoven to explore how Jews have related to the European cultural canon. They are also planning future research on transgender history in Eastern Europe. They have recently published an article on beggars’ music in the Warsaw Ghetto in the journal Jewish Social Studies. Their other publications include an article on the musician, ethnographer, and journalist Menachem Kipnis in Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry and articles for volumes III and VI of the Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945.

Publications

Book

In the Season of Hunger and Plague: Musical Life in the Warsaw Ghetto (under preliminary contract with Cornell University Press)

Journal Articles

• “‘Don’t Give Up Your Ration Card’: Beggars, Noise, and the Moral Purpose of Music in the Warsaw Ghetto,” Jewish Social Studies 29, no. 2 (Spring–Summer 2024): 128–158.
• “‘Jewish Composers are the Crowning Achievements of Foreign Nations:’ Jewish Identity and Yiddish Nationalism in the Writings of Menachem Kipnis,” in François Guesnet, Benjamin Matis, and Antony Polonsky, eds., Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry 32 (2020): 309–320.

Book and Multimedia Reviews

• “‘Do What You Can to Survive: Women’s Holocaust Memories in Silent Tears: The Last Yiddish Tango,” In geveb: A Journal of Yiddish Studies, February 23, 2024, https://ingeveb.org/blog/silent-tears.
• “Review of The Book Smugglers: Partisans, Poets, and the Race to Save Jewish Treasures from the Nazis by David Fishman,” In geveb: A Journal of Yiddish Studies, May 06, 2019, https://ingeveb.org/articles/review-of-the-book-smugglers.

Encyclopedia Entries

• “Gaillon,” “Paris/La Petite Roquette,” “Paris/Tourelles,” “Pithiviers,” and “Pithiviers (CSS),” in Camps and Ghettos under European Regimes Aligned with Nazi Germany, vol. 3 of The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, edited by Geoffrey P. Megargee, Joseph R. White, and Mel Hecker (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press; Published in Association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2018).
• “Pithiviers,” in Extermination, Labor, and Transit Camps for Jews, vol. 6 of ibid., edited by Alexandra Lohse (forthcoming).

Research Interests

• Eastern European Jewish history
• The Holocaust
• Gender and sexuality in Eastern Europe
• Music history