By Stephaine L. Gross
Editor’s Note: Stephaine L. Gross is a Librarian of Electronic Reserves and Scholarly Communication at Yeshiva University.
I first met Dr. Hadassa Kosak nearly four decades ago when I began working at the Hedi Steinberg Library on Yeshiva University’s Beren campus in the spring of 1987. Back then, she was teaching history and political science at the university.
Having recently returned to America after spending eleven years in Be’er Sheva, first as a student at Ben-Gurion University and then as a teacher of English in local high schools, I was most grateful to make her acquaintance. I was touched by her sharpness of wit as well as her unassuming nature, and that opinion of her has never changed.
Not long ago I discovered that Dr. Kosak left teaching at YU after a recent mishap (actually, a serious fall). I contacted her by phone and planned a visit to her at her residence here in the city. Rather than have her participate in a faculty author book talk (logistically impractical), I suggested that she allow me to interview her for an article in the YU Observer.
It is the result of several lengthy phone conversations with her as well as my own research online. Hearing her first-person account of her early life in Europe, during and after the Holocaust, as well as her experiences in Israel, has indeed fascinated and inspired me. I hope that this humble article will give readers pause for thought as we commemorate Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day in Israel).
Early life
Hadassa Kosak was born in Przyrów Częstochowa, Poland in 1938. Her parents, Bronislawa (née Landau) and Dawid Kozak, as well as her older sister, Marion, lived comfortably, as they owned a factory. When the war began, however, her family and the rest of the Jewish community sought sanctuary among ‘righteous gentiles.’ In the case of the Kozaks, their saviors were at first convent nuns, then the Sitkowski family in Warsaw. “We decided to take in Hadassah and she was brought over to our house in 1943,” Andrzej Sitkowski said, in an interview with the Winnipeg Press on January 25, 2022.
Photo Caption: The names of Helena Sitkowska and her son Andrzej on the wall of honor in the Garden of the Righteous, Yad Vashem
Photo Credit: Yad Vashem
Tragically, her father Dawid perished in Hailfingen Labor Camp, a subcamp of Natzweiler Concentration Camp near Stuttgart in Germany in 1945, just before the end of the war. Hadassa, her mother and sister survived, and all three returned to their hometown, staying with friends and relatives until 1947.
“Since my mother was not an ardent Zionist, she allowed my sister Dobra Jenta (Marion in English) to be evacuated from Europe to Britain,” Dr. Kosak told the YU Observer. “In 1947 prominent German Jewish philanthropist, Rabbi Solomon Schonfeld, organized a kindertransport, and sent Marion to Stamford Hill, London.”
She continued, “At the war’s end, my mother and I went to Paris, where we and some relatives lived in a hotel. I attended primary school and learned French. When that arrangement did not work out, Mother decided to relocate us to Tel Aviv, where Mother had a brother and sister. “This was in 1951 and I was about 10 years old. I enrolled in the WIZO Hadassim Youth Village, located in Even Yehuda near Netanya.” she related.
According to the Hadassim website, “the school was established in 1947 for children who survived the Holocaust and arrived in Israel without parents, or whose parents were unable to care for them. From the beginning, the school has focused on Aliyah absorption, helping support children as they acclimate to the country on a physical and emotional level.” After attending Hadassim, Hadassa continued to study at the Geulah High School.
Dr. Kosak told the YU Observer, “I did not go directly to the army at age 18. I had to stay in school longer in order to catch up on various subjects, and of course, Hebrew.”
Army life
Following her years at Geulah, Hadassa was drafted into the Israeli Defense Forces for two years. “Everyone wants to know what I did as a soldier in Modi’in, the Intelligence Branch,” she said with a laugh. “It was really nothing out of the ordinary. I just licked envelopes,” she chuckled.
On a serious note, Dr. Kosak did train with live weapons such as an Uzzi rifle. However, she hoped never to have to use it. “I am a peacenik at heart, and always pray for peace,” she said.
University life
After serving in the army, Dr. Kosak enrolled in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem where she studied with the famous modern history professor Dr. Jacob Leib Talmon. “My topics of interest were history and political science,” she said. “Upon graduation with a B.A., I taught at local high schools in Tel Aviv for a few years.”
Immigration to the United States
In 1967, Hadassa decided to explore career opportunities in New York. A distant cousin on her mother’s side sponsored her while she settled in the United States and acquired citizenship. She tutored Hebrew privately and taught in schools until permanent employment was found at Yeshiva University two years later.
Instruction at YU
Popular courses that Dr. Kosak taught over the years included History of Palestine, History of NYC, Immigrant Nations: US and Israel, History of Modern Israel and Social Movements. “When I taught courses on the history of Israel, my students came to appreciate the various angles of many issues plaguing the region through debate, dialogue and research using important scholarship in books and peer-reviewed articles,” Dr. Kosak said.
Dr. Kosak also served as faculty advisor to student editors and writers for the well-received YU journal Chronos (2005-2024) and mentored students for their senior theses.
Academic publications
While teaching at YU, Dr. Kosak reworked her doctoral dissertation, The Rise Of The Jewish Working Class, New York, 1881-1905 (1987), into a well-received, CHOICE Annual Outstanding Academic Title Award (2001): Cultures of opposition : Jewish immigrant workers, New York City, 1881-1905 .
Reviewers such as Maxine S. Seller have praised her work for its “newer historical and sociological works about minorities that, while acknowledging oppression, emphasize coping mechanisms, strengths, and ‘agency’ among the oppressed.” Seller adds that Dr. Kosak “moves beyond documenting isolated incidents of resistance to developing the idea of a working-class culture of resistance.”
Other publications
Dr. Kosak has reviewed books by acclaimed historians such as Andrew Godley, Jennifer Guglielmo and Daniel Katz. Of noteworthy attention, too, is her survey article on the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire published on March 25, 1911. “For many years, I would take some of my students to an annual memorial in the city to commemorate the tragic loss of life in the fire, which consequently led to great improvements in health and safety laws and regulations,” Dr. Kosak said.
From Yad Vashem
Photo Caption: Andrzej Sitkowski (center) with Marion Kozak Miliband (1st left) and Hadassah Kozak (right) at the ceremony in Yad Vashem, 19/02/1996
Photo Credit: Yad Vashem
Acknowledging the Sitkowski Family among the Righteous Gentiles, Andrzej Sitkowski, center, attended with Marion Kozak Miliband, left, and Hadassa Kozak, right, at a ceremony in Yad Vashem, Jerusalem on February 19, 1996. Andrzej Sitkowski was 15-years-old when his mother told him that she had been asked by a neighbour to hide the little Jewish girl Hadassa Kosak from the Nazis at their home.
Hadassa said she will be forever grateful to the Sitkowskis for their selflessness.“They risked their own lives and that of their families to save us,” she added of their heroic civil disobedience.
Photo Caption: Dr. Kosak teaching her History of Palestine course on the first day of classes at Stern College for Women, August 24, 2022.
Photo Credit: Yeshiva University