ABOUT THE HONOREE

IRENE PLETKA is Vice Chairman of the YIVO Board and Founder and Chairman of the Kronhill Pletka Foundation. The Foundation supports secular Jewish culture, Yiddish language, and re-emerging Jewish communities in Europe and elsewhere.

Born in Shanghai to Polish-Jewish parents who were Sugihara refugees, Irene was raised in Australia. Fluent in multiple languages, she earned a degree in psychology and an MFA in photography from RISD, served as a visiting artist at the Bezalel Academy in Jerusalem for 20 years, and worked as a photographer, designer and, more recently, as a producer for the forthcoming film, “Who Will Write Our History?”

Irene came to YIVO almost inevitably. Her childhood Yiddish teacher in Australia was the son of one of YIVO’s founders. Her father, a lifelong member of the BUND, was a founder of the Yiddish day-school Sholem Aleichem College, as well as an activist in the Jewish community in Melbourne, Australia.

Since founding the Kronhill Pletka Foundation in 2007 and joining YIVO’s board in 2011, Irene has been an activist member of the YIVO, and of other organizations as well. She and the Foundation have supported a variety of projects in Ukraine, Poland, Russia, Serbia, Romania, Venezuela, Italy, Africa, Australia, Israel and the United States. Projects as diverse as funding the re-creation of a 17th century painted wooden synagogue in Poland, a Balkan Sephardi music festival, and enabling Israeli doctors to treat Syrian refugees are some examples of what the Kronhill Pletka Foundation supports.

YIVO, as a cultural organization and as the repository of a priceless legacy of our history in Eastern Europe, provides us with the tools with which to shape our future. This is why she supports YIVO.

INDIVIDUAL RESERVATIONS ($500 PER TICKET)

I/we plan on attending the event, and would like to purchase individual reservations.
The tax-deductible portion of each ticket is $250.

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