Esther Schor, author of Bridge of Words: Esperanto and the Dream of a Universal Language (Metropolitan Books, 2016) will be the first speaker in a series of lectures memorializing Tivadar Soros, whose memoir Masquerade, written in Esperanto, recorded his successful efforts to keep his family alive and intact in Hungary during the Nazis’ round-up and murder of thousands of Jews. The family ended up coming to the United States, where his son, George Soros, rose to prominence in the financial and humanitarian worlds.

The lecture series, made possible by a grant from the Esperantic Studies Foundation, is sponsored by the Linguistics Program at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, 365 Fifth Avenue (at 34th Street). The lecture will take place in room C198 on Friday, December 16, 2016, at 4:00 p.m.

The lectures are free and open to the public.

Professor Schor’s lecture will be introduced by Humphrey Tonkin, president emeritus of the University of Hartford and chair of the ESF board, who will speak about the life and achievements of Tivadar Soros. Professor Tonkin translated Soros’s two books from Esperanto into English: Masquerade (2000) and Crusoes in Siberia (2010).

Professor of English at Princeton University, Esther Schor has studied the origins and development of the International Language Esperanto and its position in the modern world. In many respects her new book is a reaffirmation of the importance of Esperanto as a social movement in today’s world. According to a review in the New York Times, it “leaves us in no doubt that whatever Esperanto might be doing, it seems to be doing it right.”

Future lectures will feature Michael Gordin, professor of modern and contemporary history at Princeton University (on a connection between Albert Einstein and the international language movement), Brigid O’Keeffe, professor of history at Brooklyn College (on Esperanto in the early years of the Soviet Union), Ulrich Lins, historian and author (on the persecution of Esperanto speakers under Hitler and Stalin), Nico Israel, professor of English at Hunter College (on James Joyce and Esperanto), and Ulrich Becker, New York-based publisher of Esperanto books (on publishing in Esperanto). More information is available at: www.soroslectures.org