Professor and Director of the Institute for Holocaust, Genocide & Memory Studies Hannah Pollin-Galay’s 2024 book, Occupied Words: What the Holocaust Did to Yiddish, has recently been recognized with two awards. Pollin-Galay’s book examines how the Yiddish language changed in response to the trauma of the Holocaust, and considers those changes as a form of collective memory.
For its outstanding contribution to Yiddish and Holocaust Studies, Occupied Words received the 2024 National Jewish Book Award in the Holocaust category.
And for its excellence in the field of Jewish Studies, it was awarded the 2025 Jordan Schnitzer Book Award in the category of Jewish Literature & Linguistics, given by the Association for Jewish Studies.
The book has been reviewed by media outlets around the world, including the Times Literary Supplement and the New Books Network.