Name: Book Talk: 'Olek's Gambit' by Tsudek Zakalik [HYBRID EVENT]
Start: 2026-04-13T15:30:00-04:00
End: 2026-04-13T17:00:00-04:00
Location: Edward B. Bunn S.J. Intercultural Center

Book Talk: 'Olek's Gambit' by Tsudek Zakalik [HYBRID EVENT]

Hybrid event — Zoom link at bottom of description.
Join translator David L. Zakalik in conversation with Aviel Roshwald, Professor of History at Georgetown University, for a discussion of Olek’s Gambit, the forthcoming English translation of a Yiddish novel by writer and journalist Tsudek Zakalik (1900–1980).
Drawing on the author’s wartime experiences, the novel traces Tsudek Zakalik’s flight from Nazi-occupied Warsaw to Soviet-controlled Białystok, followed by arrest and imprisonment in a Gulag labor camp in the Komi Republic. After the 1941 Sikorski–Mayski agreement, Zakalik spent several years moving across Central Asia before returning to liberated Poland with the Polish People's Army in 1944. First published between 1963 and 1975, the work offers a rare literary perspective on Jewish displacement, survival, and life in the Soviet Union during World War II.
Moderator: Anna Smelova, Associate Director of the Jacques Rossi Memorial Fund for Gulag Research, Georgetown University
The conversation will be followed by audience Q&A. Light refreshments will be provided.
This event is sponsored by the Georgetown University Department of History, the Jacques Rossi Memorial Fund for Gulag Research, and the Center for Jewish Civilization.
https://georgetown.zoom.us/j/99067641747