"Memory Wars" is a film series hosted by Russian and East European Studies Network at Queen's University, and co-sponsored by the Jewish Studies program. Four films tackle history and memory: the twentieth-century wars, Jewish life, and the Holocaust, and the twenty-first-century complex "memory wars" that continue to animate politics across Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. All shows are free and open to the public. The movies are introduced by experts from the Queen's Departments of Political Studies and History and the Jewish Studies Program. Screenings are followed by Q&A and discussion. 

This semi-documentary film (and Poland's last Yiddish feature) features the comedy duo Shimon Dzigan and Israel Shumacher who had recently returned from the Soviet Union, and Jewish children who had survived the Holocaust. Directed on location by Nathan Gross and Shaul Goskind at the American-supported Helenowek Colony, an orphanage and school near Lodz, this film includes Dzigan and Shumacher's virtuoso turn as all the characters in Sholem Aleichem's "Kasrilevke Brent" (Kasrilevke is Burning), and an exchange of roles where they become the children's audience. Reversals continue during the performers' visit to the children's residence, as the children teach adults about the healing possibilities of music, dance and storytelling. Our Children was produced under the scrutiny of the Polish Communist Party and subsequently was not allowed to be shown in Poland.