Past Lunch and Learns Graphic V2

Start Learning: Stream Lunch & Learn episodes at your convenience. Programs feature Holocaust survivors, their children and grandchildren, notable speakers on timely issues, and historical experts.

These programs aim to present perspectives and voices that challenge and inspire people to confront bigotry, racism, and indifference, and to consider how their actions make a difference. 

See what's coming up! 

 

Disclaimer: The views, information, or opinions expressed in these programs are solely those of the individuals involved and do not necessarily represent those of the Holocaust Center for Humanity.

D-Day Girls

With Author Sarah Rose | March 12, 2024 | Honoring Women's History Month 

In 1942, the Allies were losing, Germany seemed unstoppable, and every able man in England was on the front lines. To “set Europe ablaze,” in the words of Winston Churchill, the Special Operations Executive  (SOE), whose spies were trained in everything from demolition to sharpshooting, was forced to do something unprecedented: recruit women. Thirty-nine answered the call, leaving their lives and families to become saboteurs in France.

In D-Day Girls, Sarah Rose draws on recently de­classified files, diaries, and oral histories to tell the thrilling story of three of these remarkable women. 

Join us for a conversation with Sarah Rose to hear about Andree Borrel, a scrappy and streetwise Parisian who blew up power lines, Odette Sansom, an unhappily married suburban mother who saw the SOE as her ticket out, and many other women whose involvement influenced the war. 

Sarah Rose is the author of For All the Tea in China: How England Stole the World’s Favorite Drink and Changed History. She has written for the Wall Street Journal, Outside, The Saturday Evening Post, and Men’s Journal. In 2014, she was awarded a Lowell Thomas Prize in Travel Writing.

Sponsored by Verizon.

 

Meeting the Moment: Navigating Descussions about the Israel-Hamas War

With Paul Regelbrugge, Director of Education and Branda Anderson, Teaching and Learning Specialist | February 13, 2024 

*A recorded version of this program is not available. 

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The conflict involving Israel and Hamas poses daunting challenges for educators, students and their families. In this engaging session, participants will be empowered to engage in and facilitate safe, respectful conversations about the ongoing conflict by better recognizing Islamophobia and antisemitism, and using and applying precise, nuanced language that humanizes; avoiding generalizations, stereotypes and inaccuracies.

Sponsored by Verizon. 

 

Rain of Ash: Roma, Jews, and the Holocaust

With Author Ari Joskowicz | January 9, 2024 

At least 250,000 Roma were murdered by the Nazis between 1939-1945. After the war, discrimination against Roma continued all over Europe and this crime against the Roma was largely ignored. Author and historian Ari Joskowicz, in his new book, Rain of Ash: Roma, Jews, and the Holocaust, describes the postwar relationship between Roma and Jews and the efforts of the Roma to turn to Jewish institutions for recognition. 

Ari Joskowicz is a historian of European Jewry and the Holocaust with a special interest in the complicated relations between different minority groups. He is the chair of the Department of Jewish Studies at Vanderbilt University, where he teaches on the Holocaust and the history of antisemitism. His most recent book is called Rain of Ash: Roma, Jews, and the Holocaust, which appeared this spring and won the Frankel Prize for the year’s best book in Holocaust studies. He has held fellowships from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Judaic Studies, and the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies, among others.

Combating Antisemitism with JewBelong

With Archie Gottesman, Co-Founder of JewBelong | December 12, 2023  

The current rise in global antisemitism is startling.  In an attempt to bring the danger of antisemitism to the forefront of society’s consciousness, JewBelong launched a multi-media campaign to call it out as loudly as possible. You might have seen its bright pink ads and billboards with such eye-catching language as “Does your church need armed guards? ‘Cause our synagogue does. #EndJewHate” or “Being woke and antisemitic is like being a vegan who eats veal. #EndJewHate”. Whether the billboards make you laugh or cringe, they will get you talking.

Archie Gottesman is the co-founder of JewBelong.com, a groundbreaking organization and web-based platform focused on rebranding Judaism to make it more warm, relevant and welcoming for all and challenging antisemitism loudly and boldly in public spaces on billboards. 

 

 

When Young People Take the First Step: Stories of Youth Coming Together Across Conflict

With Hannah Hochkeppel | December 5, 2023 



Join Hannah Hochkeppel, youth peacebuilding educator, to hear stories of young people coming together across lines of difference in Jerusalem and in the United States. These courageous young leaders have committed themselves to learning about one another’s lives, even in the face of seemingly impossible conflict. Learn how they build trusting relationships, navigate moments of hard dialogue, and emerge ready to take action together to build more peaceful communities.

With more than 10 years of experience in a variety of education and program development spaces, Hannah is deeply invested in the work of youth empowerment, advocacy, and peace-building. Most important to her is centering youth voices and youth leadership as an integral piece of this work.

Most recently, Hannah has served as the Global Programs Director for Kids4Peace International and the United States Country Director for Seeds of Peace. Her work has focused specifically on creating interfaith and intercultural peacebuilding programs for K-12 students. She has worked with youth in the United States, along with youth globally in Western Europe, South Asia, and the Middle East (with a special focus on Israel and Palestine).

 

We Are Not Strangers

With Author Josh Tuininga | Tuesday, November 14, 2023 

Inspired by a true story, this graphic novel follows a Jewish immigrant’s efforts to help his Japanese neighbors while they are incarcerated during World War II.

When Marco Calvo arrives at the Jewish Synagogue to attend his grandfather's funeral, he is caught off guard by something very unexpected. Among his close family and friends there are some people he doesn't recognize at all. Several Japanese American families have arrived and no one is quite sure why they are here. 

What Marco discovers leads him on a journey to explore the powerful true story of his Jewish grandfather who sided with Japanese families during the incarceration camps of WW2. Set in the multicultural Seattle Central District of the 1940s, We Are Not Strangers explores the unique situation of Japanese and Jewish Americans living side by side in a country at war.  Check out the teacher guide for We Are Not Strangers.

Josh Tuininga is an author, artist, and designer living in North Bend, Washington. After studying fine art at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, he founded an art and design agency, where he continues to work as its creative director. His work has been published in Communication Arts magazine and HOW Design magazine, and he was awarded with the Communication Arts Award for excellence in illustration. Tuininga is the author of two the children’s books and We Are Not Strangers, which is his first graphic novel.

 

X Troop: The Secret Jewish Commandos Who Helped Defeat the Nazis

With Author Leah Garrett | October 10, 2023 

June 1942 - Winston Churchill and his chief of staff form an unusual plan: a new commando unit made up of Jewish refugees who have escaped to Britain. The resulting volunteers are a motley group of intellectuals, artists, and athletes, most from Germany and Austria. Many have been interned as enemy aliens, and have lost their families, their homes—their whole worlds. They will stop at nothing to defeat the Nazis. Trained in counterintelligence and advanced combat, this top secret unit becomes known as X Troop. Some simply call them a suicide squad.
 
Drawing on extensive original research, including interviews with the last surviving members, X Troop tells the astonishing story of these secret shock troops and their devastating blows against the Nazis. Her talk will also describe the X Troopers who emigrated to the United States and will discuss how their postwar lives in America were very different from those who remained in the UK.
 
Leah Garrett is the Larry A and Klara Silverstein Chair of Jewish Studies at Hunter College, City University of New York. She has published five books in Jewish studies and won and was shortlisted for numerous literary prizes. Her recent book,X Troop: The Secret Jewish Commandos of World War Two, was featured on CNN, Time Magazine, the Washington Post, the Guardian, CSPAN and a range of other venues. 

 

 

Antisemitism and the Politics of "Tolerance"

With Nicolaas Barr, Ph.D. | September 12, 2023 

 

The Netherlands is well known for its tolerant approaches to drug enforcement, legalized sex work, and gay rights. However, recent events have brought this self-congratulatory attitude into question, especially in debates over immigration and multiculturalism. Is tolerance as positive of an ideal as it seems on the surface? Or might a focus on tolerance reinforce the very conflicts it is intended to manage? This conversation will explore the legacies of the Holocaust for how antisemitism is approached in the Netherlands today and its complex relation to anti-Muslim racism.

Nicolaas P. Barr, PhD, teaches in Comparative History of Ideas and Jewish Studies at the University of Washington, Seattle. He leads a UW study abroad program to Amsterdam and is the Dutch-to-English translator of Tofik Dibi’s coming-out memoir Djinn. Nicolaas has appeared on The Stranger's podcast "Blabbermouth" to discuss such terms as anarchy, progressive, and neoliberal, and written on Dutch racism in The Nation and Jewish Currents. He's an editor for H-Low Countries and a trombonist in the Mexican band Banda Vagos.

 

An Eyewitness Account of the Cambodian Genocide

With Survivor and Author Loung Ung | June 27, 2023

  

From 1975 to 1979, 1.7 to 2 million Cambodians, a quarter of the country’s population, died under the Khmer Rouge regime. One of seven children of a high-ranking governmental official, Loung Ung was only five when the soldiers stormed into her city, forcing Loung’s family to flee and, eventually, to disperse. Orphaned, separated from her siblings, Loung was trained as a child soldier in a work camp for orphans where she was taught to hurt and hate. From an innocent girl to an angry child soldier to a bewildered refugee in America, Loung Ung shows that your past does not have to predetermine your future. Through her work, writing and activism, Loung shares how she was able to reclaim her voice, redeem herself, and to stand against injustices.

A life-long activist, Loung Ung is a public speaker, bestselling author of First They Killed My Father, Lucky Child, and Lulu in the Sky, and a co-screenplay writer of a 2017 Netflix Original Movie directed by Angelina Jolie, "First They Killed My Father." For her work, the World Economic Forum selected Loung as one of the "100 Global Youth Leaders of Tomorrow." She has been featured in the New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, People Magazine, CNN, Fresh Air with Terry Gross, and The Today Show. 

 

Profits & Persecution: German Big Business and Nazi Crimes

With Peter Hayes, PhD | June 6, 2023 | Offered as a CLE Program 

Peter Hayes, PhD,  shares an analysis of why and how Germany’s largest corporations became deeply enmeshed in Nazi crimes. From a legal perspective, Dr. Hayes specifically highlights the issue of justice and punishment, as only a handful of the industrialists involved in Nazi crimes ever suffered any penalty.

Peter Hayes (Ph.D., Yale, 1982) specializes in the histories of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust and, in particular, in the conduct of the nation’s largest corporations during the Third Reich. He taught at Northwestern for thirty-six years from 1980 to 2016, served on the academic boards of multiple professional societies and Holocaust memorial sites, featured in many documentary films, and published and edited thirteen books and more than ninety articles on the Holocaust.

 

Curating Forgotten Victims: The Nazi Genocide of the Roma and Sinti

With Dr. Barbara Warnock, Senior Curator and Head of Education, The Wiener Holocaust Library, London | May 2, 2023

The genocide carried out against the Roma and Sinti communities of Europe by the Nazis and their collaborators during the Second World War – the persecution and murder of as many as 500,000 people – has been referred to as ‘the forgotten Holocaust’ by Professor Eve Rosenhaft. After the war, survivors and relatives of victims struggled to get recognition and compensation for the persecution and losses they had suffered. In Britain and Europe today, prejudice and discrimination against Roma and Sinti is still common.

In this talk, Dr. Barbara Warnock will explore the process of curating The Wiener Holocaust Library’s exhibition on the genocide against the Roma and Sinti, staged 2019-2020. She will discuss the genesis of the project, its development, and some of the issues encountered, as well as showing some of the archival documents used in the exhibition and outlining its structure and themes.  

Dr. Barbara Warnock is Senior Curator and Head of Education at The Wiener Holocaust Library in London, where she has curated the exhibitions Jewish Resistance to the Holocaust, Berlin-London: The Lost Photographs of Gerty Simon, and Forgotten Victims: The Nazi Genocide of the Roma and Sinti, amongst others. She is the author (with John March) of Berlin-London: The Lost Photographs of Gerty Simon (2019), a Spectator Book of the Year, and a number of articles on refugee history and the Nazi persecution of Roma. She obtained her Doctorate in Austrian history from Birkbeck College, University of London, in 2016. She was for many years a history teacher and examiner.

 

 

Moving Mountains through the Power of HOPE and Resilience

With Gabriel Bol Deng, Survivor and Founder of HOPE for Ariang Foundation | April 4, 2023 

 

Gabriel Bol Deng has overcome unbelievable obstacles in life. He was 10 years old when North Sudanese Murahileen militiamen led a violent attack on his village of Ariang in South Sudan in 1987. He fled into a forest, not knowing the fate of his parents or siblings.

After his escape, Gabriel embarked on a perilous four-month long journey, crossing the Nile River and miles of desert; surviving disease and devastating hunger to reach the Dimma Refugee Camp in Ethiopia. In 1988, he had a life-changing dream in which he was reminded of his parents’ charge to him as a young boy: that he could move mountains with the power of hope. This mantra continues to guide Gabriel. In 2001, Gabriel came to the United States as part of the Refugee Resettlement Program. Gabriel is one of the Sudanese orphans known as The Lost Boys of Sudan.

Gabriel is the founder of the HOPE for Ariang Foundation which provides inclusive access to quality education in South Sudan. Over the past 15 years, Gabriel has traveled the world, sharing his life story and mission. Gabriel is a dynamic motivational speaker who inspires audiences with his examples of resilience, hard work, and giving back to others.

 

Recovering Women's History: Unsung Heroines of the Holocaust

With Author Sarah Silberstein Swartz | March 7, 2023

 

Join us for a conversation with author Sarah Silberstein Swartz to discuss her recent book, Heroines, Rescuers, Rabbis, Spies: Unsung Women of the Holocaust which profiles nine ordinary women who took extraordinary measures to save lives during the Holocaust.

Sarah Silberstein Swartz, daughter of Jewish-Polish Holocaust survivors, was born in post-war Berlin, Germany. She is a writer and award-winning editor specializing in women's studies and Holocaust literature, and Research Associate at the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute at Brandeis University. She lives in Boston with her wife and cat, near her three grandsons. 

 

One Second of Hate: A Story of Forgiveness

With Rais Bhuiyan, Founder of World Without Hate | February 21, 2023 | A recorded version of this presentation is not available. To find out where Rais Bhuiyan is speaking next, please visit his website. 

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Ten days after the 9/11 terrorist attacks on America, Rais Bhuiyan was gunned down by a white supremacist on a revenge shooting spree. Though shot in the face, Rais was fortunate to survive. Two other victims did not.

Rais ultimately forgave his attacker and eventually led an international campaign trying to save him from death row. Through this journey, his attacker learned about Rais and what he was trying to do for him. From behind bars, he renounced his hateful views and expressed deep regret for his violent actions. His final words before execution were, "One second of hate causes a lifetime of pain.”

Our stories have the power to connect, inspire, heal, and even save lives. As divisiveness continues to permeate our communities, Rais shares his story of resilience and reconciliation. Stories can help us replace ignorance with understanding, fear with acceptance, and hate with empathy – all pathways toward a more equitable, just, and peaceful society.

Rais Bhuiyan, a 9/11 hate crime survivor is the Founder of World Without Hate, a nonprofit utilizing the power of personal narrative and empathy to prevent and disrupt hate-fueled violence. Over the last dozen years, Rais has spoken to and worked with youth and adults around the globe, from college campuses and classrooms to maximum security prisons and refugee camps.

Rais worked with the Obama Administration’s Domestic Policy Council, currently represents the U.S. Department of State, as part of their speakers’ bureau, and was invited by President Biden to share his experiences at the White House’s first United We Stand Summit this past September.  His story is chronicled in the book, True American: Murder & Mercy in Texas and in documentaries such as Discovery Channel’s American Nightmare and Smartypants Productions’ The Secret Life of Muslims. Originally from Bangladesh, Rais lives in Seattle and is a member of the Humanities Washington Speakers Bureau. 

Sponsored by Humanities Washington. 

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Interrupting Privilege in the Everyday 

With Dr. Ralina Joseph | Tuesday, February 7, 2023 

 

Februrary is Black History Month. Inequality surrounds us. It can feel overwhelming to consider how to combat such inequality in an everyday fight for justice. But there are steps that we can take to combat inequality in our lives. This presentation will provide some of the steps you can take to interrupt privilege in your everyday life.

Dr. Ralina L. Joseph is Presidential Term Professor of Communication, Founding Director of the Center for Communication, Difference, and Equity, and Associate Dean of Equity & Justice in the Graduate School at the University of Washington. Ralina is the author of three books on race and communication. She is currently writing Interrupting Privilege: Talking Race and Fighting Racism, a book of essays based on her public scholarship.

Audio excerpts referenced in this program:

Offered in partnership with the Northwest African American Museum. 

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Closing the Impunity Gap: Justice for Atrocity Crimes in Africa

With Dr. Babafemi Akinrinade | January 17, 2023
 

Join us for a presentation by Professor Babafemi Akinrinade who will discuss the different means (national and international) for bringing perpetrators to justice for atrocity crimes committed in conflict countries in Africa. As justice for victims can be elusive with suspects fleeing to other countries, trials before foreign courts, especially in Euro-American countries have proved significant. What lessons can we derive from these experiences as we seek to close the impunity gap?

Babafemi Akinrinade is Professor of Human Rights at Fairhaven College, Western Washington University, Bellingham, Washington. His teaching and research focus on international law and international human rights and mass atrocities. He is the Associate Director of the Ray Wolpow Institute for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Crimes Against Humanity at Western Washington University and is the author of Atrocity Crimes, Atrocity Laws and Justice in Africa (2021).

 

A Great Experiment in Educating Teenage Refugees: The Case of a Swedish International School

With Dr. Bernice Lerner | January 3, 2023

 

After World War II, the Swedish government took in and provided medical treatment for 7,000 sick survivors of Bergen-Belsen. In September 1945, the government issued an order for schooling to be offered to those under the age of 18, who had missed years of study on account of the war. In this presentation Dr. Lerner will show photographs of teachers and students at an “Internat” school her mother attended. She will share the complex process of recruiting distrustful adolescents, the challenges of teaching the "environmentally damaged" (many of the orphaned and homeless teens were bitter and disillusioned), and the instructors' formidable goals and "experimental" methods.

Dr. Bernice Lerner is the author of All the Horrors of War: A Jewish Girl, a British Doctor, and the Liberation of Bergen-Belsen,, and other writings on the Holocaust and on virtue ethics. As director of Boston University’s Center for Character and Social Responsibility, Bernice lectured widely and taught courses on character education and on the Holocaust. Most recently, she served as Dean of Adult Learning at Hebrew College.

This program is the 5th in the 5-part series, "Embracing Our Humanity and Divesrity" sponsored by Verizon. 

 

Unpacking Threads of Trauma

With Gail Weiss Gaspar | December 6, 2022

Hear from executive coach and memoir author, Gail Weiss Gaspar, about how she reckoned with family secrets and the legacy of her father's experience as a Holocaust survivor and how you can grow from trauma that may be holding you back from the life you want.

Gail Weiss Gaspar, MA, ACC, is a certified coach, an executive career strategist and the author of Carrying my Father’s Torch: From Holocaust Trauma to Transformation. She has a B.A. in Psychology from Ithaca College, an M.A. in Education/Human Resource Development from The George Washington University, and Professional Certifications from both The Coaches Training Institute (CTI) and International Coach Federation (ICF). 

This program is the 4th in the 5-part series, "Embracing Our Humanity and Divesrity" sponsored by Verizon. 
 

Besa: Muslim Albanians Who Rescued Jews During the Holocaust*

With Marlene W. Yahalom, PhD, Director of Education, American Society for Yad Vashem | November 15, 2022

*This program was not recorded, but you can learn more about these incredible stories of rescue HERE. 

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Following the German occupation in 1943, the Albanian population, in an extraordinary act, refused to comply with the occupier’s orders to turn over lists of Jews residing within the country’s borders. The Albanians not only protected their Jewish citizens, but also provided sanctuary to Jewish refugees who had arrived in Albania, when it was still under Italian rule, and now found themselves faced with the danger of deportation to concentration camps. The remarkable assistance afforded to the Jews was grounded in Besa, a code of honor, which still today serves as the highest ethical code in the country. 
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Marlene W. Yahalom, PhD, is the Director of Education for the American Society for Yad Vashem, in New York City.  She serves on the Education Advisory Board of the Rose and Sigmund Strochlitz Holocaust Resource Center, Jewish Federation of Eastern Connecticut, and on the Advisory Board of PRISM: an interdisciplinary journal for Holocaust educators. Dr. Yahalom is the child and grandchild of six Holocaust Survivors.

This program is the 3rd in the 5-part series, "Embracing Our Humanity and Divesrity" sponsored by Verizon. 
 

The Wave: America's Infamous High School Experiment in Fascism

With Mark Hancock | November 1, 2022

 

In spring 1967, in Palo Alto, California, high school history teacher Ron Jones conducted a social experiment in fascism with his class of 10th-grade 15-year-olds, meant to sample the experience of the attraction and rise of the Nazis in Germany before World War II. In a matter of days the experiment began to spin out of control, as the students and he became caught up in the excitement, confusion and chaos. This story has attracted considerable attention over the years through films, books, plays and even musicals. It serves as a teaching tool, used in schools worldwide, to facilitate discussion of the elements, appeal and dangers of extremism.

Mark Hancock was a student in the original Wave class, and is now the historian for the story. Mark is Associate Producer and appears in both award-winning documentaries about The Wave, "Lesson Plan" and "The Invisible Line." Mark is a graduate of the Yad Vashem International Seminar for Educators summer program, and has spoken in the media and at film festivals and Wave theater productions in several countries. He is currently a PhD Candidate in Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Gratz College, focusing on the rise of extremism; and holds a Master's in Nonprofit Leadership from Seattle University. Learn more at www.markhancock.com about Mark's activities.

This program is the 2nd in the 5-part series, "Embracing Our Humanity and Divesrity" sponsored by Verizon. 

 

Confronting White Nationalism in Schools

With Nora Flanagan | October 4, 2022

 

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How can students, educators, parents, and other community stakeholders respond to white nationalist signaling in and around our schools? From anonymous graffiti to organized school board takeovers, efforts to undermine schools as welcoming democratic institutions are on the rise. In this session, we will discuss proactive steps, best practices, and specific strategies and resources to respond and strengthen our school communities against hate.

Nora Flanagan has been teaching high school English in the Chicago Public Schools for twenty-five years and currently serves on the Illinois Holocaust and Genocide Education Commission. After initially encountering emergent hate groups in her community as a teenager, Nora now researches and organizes against white nationalism as a Senior Fellow with the Western States Center, a Portland-based nonprofit working to support inclusive democracy and confront bigotry nationwide. Most recently, this work has involved speaking to educators, community groups, government agencies, and media outlets about the intersection of bigotry and youth culture. She co-authored Confronting White Nationalism in Schools, a toolkit designed to help schools thoughtfully and effectively respond to incidents of racial hostility and proactively strengthen school communities. This project has been featured in the Washington Post, The New York Times, PBS NewsHour, NPR, The Chicago Tribune, and other outlets, as well as conferences and panels across the country. 

This program is the 1st in the 5-part series, "Embracing Our Humanity and Divesrity" sponsored by Verizon. 

 

Magda's Story

With Jack Schaloum | September 20, 2022 

Jack Schaloum 450x275Magda distinctly remembers her younger brother's 15th birthday. It was the same day they arrived in Auschwitz with her mother. It was also the last time she would see her mother and her brother.

Magda grew up in Gyor, Hungary and her plan was to become a teacher. But antisemitism within Hungary made it nearly impossible for her to fulfill this dream. Shortly after the Nazis occupied Hungary, in March 1944, the Nazis deported Jews by the thousands to Auschwitz and other labor and death camps. Magda, 22 years old, was sent with her mother and brother to Auschwitz. 

Jack Schaloum shares the story of his mother Magda.  Jack is a member of the Holocaust Center's Speakers Bureau and a member of the Holocaust Center's Board of Directors.

 

Journey to Freedom: My Parents' Holocaust Story

With Beverley Silver | September 6, 2022

 

Beverley Silver LL 450x275Johanna was born in Germany in 1925. As the Nazis came to power, her grandmother, Anna Stern, feared for her granddaughter’s life and made arrangements for Johanna to escape Germany on the Kindertransport where challenges continued.

Malcolm was born in Poland in 1912. He had a large family. He graduated from the Vienna Academy of Design. His life’s ambition was to be a clothes designer. Fearful of living in Poland, he fled to Switzerland where he was interned in a Labor Camp for Jewish refugees. 

When Johanna and Malcolm met in New York in 1946, a new era of their lives would begin, but they would never forget the tragedies that they left behind in Europe.  Beverley Silver tells the story of Johanna Stern Moss and Malcolm Moss, her parents. 

Beverley Silver is a career art educator who has worked extensively in K-12 public and private schools, museum, and university settings.  She directed educational programs for the general public and special audiences at Bellevue Art Museum.  Recently, she retired from Seattle University where she directed the Job Placement Office in the College of Education and currently serves as an adjunct instructor. Beverley is a member of the Holocaust Center's Speakers Bureau.

 

 

Remarkable Resilience: The Life and Legacy of Noémi Ban Beyond the Holocaust  

With Diane M. Sue, Ph.D. | August 16, 2022

Diane M. Sue, Ph.D., was a close friend of Hungarian-American, Holocaust survivor Noémi Ban. Based on years of friendship and deep discussion, Diane brought Noémi’s inspiring story to life in the newly released book: Remarkable Resilience: The Life and Legacy of Noémi Ban Beyond the Holocaust.  Diane will share about her friendship with Noémi and about the process of writing the book in the last eight months of Noémi’s life. 

Diane M. Sue received her Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, worked as a school psychologist and school counselor, and has taught adjunct courses in the education and psychology departments at Western Washington University. Diane has been recognized for her professional and volunteer work with children and families, receiving the Washington State School Psychologist of the Year Award and the Western Washington University College of Education Professional Excellence Award.  

 

So They Remember: Surviving the Holocaust in Soviet Ukraine

With Maksim Goldenshteyn | August 2, 2022

 

"Without any exaggeration, Maksim Goldenshteyn’s book, So They Remember, should be counted among the best publications on the topic of the Holocaust in Romania." - Diana Dumitru, leading historian of the Holocaust in Eastern Europe

Seattle author Maksim Goldenshteyn was 23 years old when he first learned that his grandparents, born in Soviet Ukraine and Romania in the 1920s and 1930s, had survived the Holocaust. Growing up in the U.S., he heard only fragments of their wartime stories, which rarely aligned with the most common depictions from the central and western European Jewish experience. His new book, a decade in the making, tells his family's story. In this presentation, Maksim will trace his family's journey (and that of Soviet-Jewish families like his) during the twentieth century. And he’ll reflect on how learning about his family's past has taken him on an unexpected journey of his own.

Born in Chernivtsi, Ukraine, Maksim Goldenshteyn immigrated to the United States with his family in 1992. He grew up in the suburbs of Seattle, where thousands of Russian-speaking Jewish refugees from the former Soviet Union would settle. Maksim studied journalism at the University of Washington and has written for regional newspapers including The Seattle Times. He now works as a publicist. 

 

999: The Extraordinary Young Women of the First Official Jewish Transport to Auschwitz

With Heather Dune Macadam | July 19, 2022

Praised for its respect, sympathy, and important contribution to Holocaust literature, “Heather Dune Macadam’s 999 reinstates the girls to their rightful place in history” (Foreword Reviews).

Historian Heather Dune Macadam discusses her acclaimed book, 999, the staggering, harrowing story of the young unmarried Jewish women who left their homes in Slovakia believing they were reporting for work in a German factory and would return home after a few short months.  

Heather Dune Macadam is the acclaimed author of 999: The Extraordinary Young Women of the First Official Jewish Transport to Auschwitz and Rena's Promise: A Story of Sisters in Auschwitz. A board member of the Cities of Peace: Auschwitz and the director and president of the Rena's Promise Foundation, her work in the battle against Holocaust denial have been recognized by Yad Vashem in the UK and Israel, the USC Shoah Foundation, and others. Heather is the Producer and Director of the documentary film, "999: The Extraordinary Young Women of the First Official Jewish Transport to Auschwitz" and her work has been featured in National Geographic, on PBS, and other major media outlets. 

 

 

Sharon Rennert.3 LL slide 450x275Becoming Bielski: A Personal Story of the Bielski Partisans*

With Sharon Rennert, Granddaughter of Tuvia Bielski | June 21, 2022
*Due to copyright, this program was not recorded

The Bielski Partisans bravely achieved the largest armed rescue of Jews by Jews during the Holocaust and have grown to tens of thousands of descendants living all over the world. Their story inspired the Hollywood film “Defiance” staring Daniel Craig as real-life partisan commander Tuvia Bielski. Tuvia’s granddaughter, Sharon Rennert, is a documentary filmmaker who has been exploring her family history for almost two decades. She will share her discoveries about her legacy which has taken her on a worldwide journey from Brooklyn to Belarus and has helped her build a rich family archive that provides uniquely personal insights into the inspirational heroes and survivors of the Bielski Partisans.

Sharon Rennert is a television editor, independent filmmaker, swing dancer and public speaker. She has a Bachelor of Science in Broadcasting and Film from Boston University and a Master of Fine Arts in Cinema-Television from the University of Southern California. She has been editing documentary and reality programs for over twenty-five years and is an active member of American Cinema Editors and the Motion Picture Editor’s Guild. She shares the Bielski story whenever possible to help honor the memory of her grandparents and pass this important part of Jewish history on through the generations.

Special thanks to the Powell Family Foundation for their commitment to Holocaust education and for making this program possible. 

 

Pink Triangle Legacies: Coming Out in the Shadow of the Holocaust

With Dr. Jake Newsome | Tuesday, June 7, 2022 | Commemorating LGBTQ+ Pride Month in June!

 

LGBTQ+ communities have long been regarded as one of the “forgotten victims” of the Nazi regime. Yet, were they truly forgotten? Using archival evidence, Dr. Jake Newsome reveals how societies purposefully silenced LGBTQ+ Holocaust victims for decades, which had devastating consequences for generations of LGBTQ+ Germans. Ignored by the historical profession and the majority of the population, LGBTQ+ communities set out to write their own history, and transformed the pink triangle - the badge once forced upon gay concentration camp prisoners - into the original LGBTQ+ symbol of pride, social activism and positive identity. The history of the pink triangle’s transformation teaches us about the dangers of ignoring the past, as well as the power of history to heal and empower communities.

Dr. Jake Newsome is an award-winning scholar of German and American LGBTQ+ history whose research and resources educate global audiences. His forthcoming book Pink Triangle Legacies: Coming Out in the Shadow of the Holocaust (Cornell University Press, Sept. 2022) chronicles the ongoing struggle for the acknowledgment and memorialization of the Nazis’ LGBTQ+ victims. It also traces the transformation of the pink triangle from a concentration camp badge in Nazi Germany into a symbol of queer activism, pride, and community beginning in the 1970s. In addition to serving as a historical advisor for film projects, podcasts, and plays, Dr. Newsome has been invited by the French, UK, and US governments to speak about the important lessons that LGBTQ+ history has for all of us today. He now works as a museum professional in Washington, DC. 

 


UNDERSTANDING & DISRUPTING GENOCIDE: Lunch-and-Learn Series

Survivors, eyewitnesses, and experts to help us to better understand and recognize genocide so that we can turn our collective knowledge into action. 

6. Justice for the Rohingya

With Wai Wai Nu | May 17, 2022

 

 

Wai Wai Nu will share how she emerged from seven years as a political prisoner in Burma to work for democracy and human rights, particularly on behalf of marginalized women and members of her ethnic group, the Rohingya.

Wai Wai Nu is a human rights advocate from Myanmar and a former political prisoner dedicated to building democracy, human rights, and more inclusive futures for all people of Myanmar, including her Rohingya community. She is a recipient of the City of Athens Democracy Award, the N-Peace Award, and the Hillary Rodham Clinton Award. She has been named a TIME Next Generation Leader, a Global Thinker by Foreign Policy Magazine, and one of the BBC 100 Women. She was a Liberty & Leadership Scholar at the Bush Institute and an Obama Foundation Scholar at Columbia University. Nu has given talks at the United Nations, the United States Congress, and many universities around the world. She is the founder and Executive Director of the Women’s Peace Network and was recently a Fellow at the Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.


5. Hitler’s Courts: The Misuse of Executive and Judicial Power

With Joshua Greene | May 3, 2022 | 1 CLE Ethics Credit Available Through May 17, 2022

 Part 1: Hitler's Courts Documentary Film (30 min)

 Part 2: Joshua Greene Commentary (30 min)

 

What happens when the legal establishment becomes a tool in the hands of a dictatorial government? This eye-opening talk by author-filmmaker Joshua M. Greene reveals the consequences of appointing judges based not on their wisdom but on their allegiance to the head of state.

Joshua M. Greene, is a Fellow at Yale University’s Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies. He completed his graduate degrees in religious studies at Hofstra University. His books on Holocaust history have sold more than one-half million copies and are published in five languages, and his documentary films on war crimes trials and eyewitness testimony are seen on PBS and Discovery. He has been a featured speaker at the Pentagon, the Judge Advocates College, the New York Public Library Distinguished Authors series, and at synagogues, churches, universities, and law schools nationwide. He served as Director of Strategic Planning for the United Nations Summit of Religious and Spiritual Leaders and is a mediator serving in the New York area. 

Special thank you to the Holocaust Center's Lawyer's Committee: Ruth Atherton, Marc Boman, Kathy Feldman, Chuck Maduell, Christina MacDonald, Jay Riffkin, Rob Spitzer, and Jeff Sprung

 

 4. Confronting Collective Complicity: The Uyghur Genocide Creeps Close to Home 

With Rushan Abbas | April 19, 2022

 

A few short years ago, most people had never heard of the Uyghur people. But even as awareness has risen following national designations of the genocide, and the Uyghur Tribunal’s independent finding, most remain unaware of the complicity western organizations and firms have in it. This presentation will aim to lay out the reasons for the genocide, and the ways the international community must respond collectively.

Rushan Abbas was born, raised, and attended university in Urumchi, the capital city in East Turkistan (AKA Xinjiang). She has been an activist since her days at university in East Turkistan, where she co-organized pro-democracy protests in the mid and late 80s. Since coming to the United States, she has co-established the first Uyghur organization in the US in 1993 and served as the vice president. She has been a tireless advocate for Uyghur rights. Recently, after Beijing accelerated the genocidal policies in East Turkistan, in 2017, she established the Campaign for Uyghurs to advocate for her people among the government officials and lawmakers, interfaith organizations, universities and think tanks and as well as the grassroots movements.  In September 2018, her own sister was abducted by the Chinese regime and illegally sentenced to prison in retaliation for Abbas’s activism. Today, Abbas continues to advocate for her release and the freedom of millions of other Uyghurs as well as delivering remarks at national and international forums. She works frequently with the State Department to engage with international civic society and meets with international government leaders. Ms. Abbas received a Freedom Fighter 2019 Award for her work raising awareness on the current Uyghur Genocide. She resides in Virginia. 

 

 3. Solidarity for Impact

With Andrea Gittleman | April 5, 2022 

Andrea Gittleman provides an overview of ongoing and emerging conflicts across the world that our community should be aware of as we consider opportunities to turn remembrance into action.

Andrea Gittleman is a senior program manager for the Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide, where she focuses on policy outreach, justice and accountability efforts for mass atrocities, and leads the Center's work on Burma/Myanmar. Previously she was interim director of US policy and senior legislative counsel at Physicians for Human Rights where she designed advocacy and policy strategies on a broad range of international human rights issues, including mass atrocities. Prior to attending law school she served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Mauritania where she managed gender and development programs.

 

 2. Surviving Genocide: My Family, My Rwanda, My Life

With Emmanuel Turaturanye | March 15, 2022

Emmanuel was just 16 years old when, beginning April 7, 1994, approximately 1 million people, including over 100 members of Emmanuel's family, were murdered in just 100 days in Rwanda.  All the while, the world community not only stood by and watched, but UN and other forces withdrew, leaving so many defenseless in the face of genocide.  The Holocaust Center for Humanity is proud to be a partner with the Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education to share presentations from survivors of genocide. 

Emmanuel Turaturanye was born and lived, together with his  parents, five brothers and sisters and three cousins in the Ngoma province of Rwanda.  After having lost over 100 members of his family in the 1994 genocide, he eventually met, and later married Danielle, a travelling missionary in Rwanda.  Emmanuel now lives and works in Beaverton, OR, motivated to tell the story of his family and Rwanda to help educate people about the devastating consequences of hatred. Emmanuel is a member of the Holocaust Center's Speakers Bureau.

 

 1. Voices from Srebrenica: Survivor Narratives of the Bosnian Genocide

With Hasan Hasanović and Ann Petrila | March 1, 2022 

In the hills of eastern Bosnia sits the small town of Srebrenica, now infamous for the genocide that occurred there during the Bosnian War. In July 1995, when the town fell to Serbian forces, 12,000 Muslim men and boys fled through the woods, seeking safe territory. Hunted for six days, more than 8000 were captured, killed at execution sites and later buried in mass graves. Hasan Hasanovic was one of the survivors. Years later, he and Ann Petrila would set out to interview survivors, providing eyewitness accounts of a genocide and revealing stories of individual trauma, loss and resilience in their book, Voices from Srebrenica: Survivor Narratives of the Bosnian Genocide. 

Hasan Hasanović is the head of the oral history team at the Srebrenica Memorial Center, and a survivor of the Srebrenica Genocide. Hasanović survived the genocide but other family members did not, including his twin brother and his father.  He educates thousands of visitors each year at the Memorial.  

Ann Petrila, MSW, MPA is a Professor, the Coordinator of Global Initiatives, and Director of Global Practice Bosnia at the University of Denver Graduate School of Social Work. Every summer she leads an experiential Bosnia-based course and internship program for University of Denver graduate students and has taken close to 300 university students to Bosnia. She is dedicated to raising awareness and telling the truth about the genocide in Bosnia.

 


WINTER SERIES:  November 2021-February 2022 

8. Leo’s Journey – In My Father’s Words 

With Richard Lowy | February 15, 2022

 

Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp was ground zero for one of the largest human experimentation programs in the world, where doctors performed horrific experiments on live prisoners, with a specific focus on twins.  One of those twins was a 15-year-old boy named Leopold Lovi (Leo Lowy).   

Leo miraculously survived and went on to live a long and productive life, but the memories of what he and his twin sister Miriam had endured at the hands of Dr. Josef Mengele stayed with him until his dying days. Before he passed away in 2002, Leo's son Richard encouraged his father to share his story so that the suffering of Leo and the other twins would never be forgotten.

Special thank you to Gail Fox for sponsoring this week's program. 

 

7. The Holocaust through Muslim Eyes

With Dr. Mehnaz Afridi | February 1, 2022

Author and scholar Mehnaz Afridi discusses her book, Shoah through Muslim Eyes, which describes her journey with Judaism as a Muslim. Her book is based on the struggle of antisemitism within Muslim communities and her interviews with survivors. Rejecting polemical myths about the Holocaust and Jews, Afridi offers a new way of creating understanding of two communities through the acceptance and enormity of the Shoah. Her journey is both personal and academic as she reflects on the impact of the Holocaust, her interviews with survivors, antisemitism and Islamophobia, and Islam and memory. 

Dr. Mehnaz Afridi earned her PhD in Religious Studies from the University of South Africa. She currently serves as Professor of Religious Studies and Director of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Interfaith Education Center at Manhattan College (Riverdale, NY). Her publications and presentations have focused on the Qur'an and human rights, Islamic Literature and Culture; Judaism & Islam, Holocaust and antisemitism, including her co-edited book, Global Perspectives on Orhan Pamuk: Existentialism and Politics (Palgrave MacMillan, 2012). She received numerous grants, fellowships and awards for her outstanding work and speaks to audiences around the globe. Mehnaz is one of only a small handful of Muslim scholars teaching about the Holocaust. Her work has built bridges across communities and has challenged people of all faiths to look beyond their assumptions.

 

 

6. The Dressmakers of Auschwitz: The True Story of the Women Who Sewed to Survive

With Lucy Adlington | January 18, 2022

The Dressmakers of Auschwitz powerfully chronicles the stories of the women who used their sewing skills to survive the Holocaust, stitching beautiful clothes in an extraordinary fashion workshop within the Auschwitz concentration camp. 

Drawing on diverse sources – including interviews with the last surviving seamstress – The Dressmakers of Auschwitz follows the fates of these brave women. Their bonds of family and friendship not only helped them endure persecution but also to play their part in camp resistance. Weaving the dressmakers’ remarkable experiences within the context of Nazi policies for plunder and exploitation, Lucy Adlington exposes the greed, cruelty, and hypocrisy of the Third Reich and offers a fresh look at a little-known chapter of the Second World War and the Holocaust. 

Lucy Adlington has written and published more than 13 award winning and acclaimed books, both fiction and nonfiction. She is a clothes historian with a passion for vintage and antique costume. For more than twenty years Lucy has collected antique garments, researched dress history and shared stories of people’s lives through clothes, which she explains reveal so much about culture, technology, trade, exploration, identity and creativity. 

 

5. My Soul is Filled with Joy: A Holocaust Story

With Karen Treiger | January 4, 2022

The award winning book, My Soul is Filled with Joy, tells how Sam and Esther Goldberg met in the Polish forest – just outside of the Treblinka Death Camp. It was August 3, 1943, just one day after Sam escaped the camp during a prisoner uprising. With 870,000 murdered at Treblinka, Sam was one of approximately 65 to survive and live until the end of the war. Esther had been hiding in that patch of forest for a year and was out that morning, looking for mushrooms to eat. They met and after hearing of the prisoner revolt, she took him to the Righteous Gentiles who, at great danger to themselves, helped to hide them until they were liberated by the Red Army in July of 1944.

Local author Karen Treiger, is Sam and Esther’s daughter-in-law. Karen Treiger retired from her law practice in 2015 to research and write her in-laws’ story of survival during the Holocaust.  She graduated from New York University Law School, with honors, in 1988, where she served as Editor-in-Chief of the Law Review.  She lives in Seattle and is an accomplished and dynamic speaker. Karen has presented at many Continuing Legal Education Conferences, community events, and is a member of the Holocaust Center's Speakers Bureau.

 
 

4. Remembering Felicia: The Son of an Auschwitz Survivor Shares Her Story

With Matthew Erlich | December 21, 2021

Felicia Lewkowicz, was born in Krakow, Poland in 1923. In the spring of 1941, Felicia and one of her brothers were sent by the Nazis to the Krakow ghetto while her mother and other siblings were sent to Tarnow, 70 miles from Krakow. Luckily, Felicia was able to get work outside the ghetto, cleaning the offices of German officers. One day, she did not return to the ghetto, escaping onto a train which would take her to Vienna, Austria. 

In Vienna, Felicia was able to acquire false identity papers and found work in a hotel.  When a friend was caught smuggling clothes, a photo of Felicia was found among the clothes and she fled the hotel for fear of being caught. The authorities caught up with Felicia and she was sent to Auschwitz as a political prisoner.

Against all odds, Felicia survived Auschwitz and Bergen Belsen. She met her husband in a displaced persons camp in Germany and later moved to Canada before moving to the United States. Felicia's son Matthew Erlich tells her incredible story. Matthew is a member of the Holocaust Center's Speakers Bureau. 

 

3. Searching for Survivors: The Fate of the St. Louis Passengers

With Scott Miller | December 7, 2021

In early June of 1939 the St. Louis, a ship carrying 937 refugee passengers – almost all of them Jews fleeing Nazi Germany – was denied entry into both Cuba and the United States. After sailing off the coast of Miami Beach and with no refuge in sight, the St. Louis had to sail back to Europe.

The story of the St Louis has become a symbol of America’s indifference to the plight of Jews during the Holocaust. The fate of the ship’s passengers, however, remained an unsolved mystery for over sixty years. Scott Miller will discuss his decade long search to uncover the fate of every passenger on board this famous and fateful journey.

Scott Miller was a founding staff member at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, where he worked for 30 years (1989-2019), and is the co-author (with Sarah Ogilvie) of Refuge Denied – The St. Louis Passengers and the Holocaust (University of Wisconsin Press: 2006) -- the story of their search for the St. Louis passengers.

Scott managed and was spokesperson for the Holocaust Museum’s Rescue the Evidence initiative – the program to build the collection of record on the Holocaust through the acquisition of primary source and original research materials. In this capacity directed the museum’s archival, artifact, photo, film, music and oral history collections.

Currently Scott is a curatorial consultant for the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City.

 

2. Concentration Camps before Nazi Germany

With Andrea Pitzer | November 16, 2021

The extermination camps of the Holocaust mark the nadir of the twentieth century and stand alone in history. But how did humanity come to that point? Before the death camps, a concentration camp system had existed for years in Nazi Germany. And before those early Nazi camps, places called "concentration camps" had existed for decades around the globe. Join us to learn how the idea of concentration camps entered the world, and how those roots fed the camps' most horrific and lethal incarnation.

Andrea Pitzer is the author of One Long Night: A Global History of Concentration Camps, which was named a best history book of 2017 by Smithsonian Magazine. She loves to unearth lost and forgotten history.

In addition to One Long Night, Pitzer is the author of Icebound: Shipwrecked at the Edge of the World, which narrates the three Arctic voyages of Dutch navigator William Barents, and The Secret History of Vladimir Nabokov. Andrea has written for The Washington Post, The New York Review of Books, Outside, GQ, Vox, Slate, and elsewhere. Her books have been featured in the New York Times, the New York Review of Books, the Boston Globe, the Wall Street Journal, the Economist, and on MSNBC, among other outlets. Her research has taken her to four continents and on multiple expeditions to the Arctic.

 

1. My Father Was One of the Lucky Ones

With Ron Gompertz | November 2, 2021

In the late 1920's, there were 1,500 Jewish people living in the Krefeld, Germany. One of them was young Rolf Gompertz. When the Nazis came to power in 1933, Rolf remembers his world changing. On November 9, 1938, Nazi soldeiers banged at the door of his parents' apartment, demanding to be let in. They stormed into the apartment, ready to arrest Rolf's father. The Nazi's left before arresting him, but that night they would arrest 30,000 other Jewish men in what became known as Kristallnacht, a turning point in the Holocaust.  Rolf would prove to be one of the lucky Jewish individuals to find refuge in the United States. Rolf's son Ron, tells his father's story of antisemitism and persecution and eventually building a new life as an immigrant in the United States. 

Ron Gompertz works in the tech industry, a published author, and is a member of the Holocaust Center's Speakers Bureau.

 


Wendy Lower Ravine LL 7 450x275FALL SERIES: Connecting the Holocaust to Today

6. October 26, 2021 | The Ravine: A Family, A Photograph, A Holocaust Massacre Revealed

With Dr. Wendy Lower 

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In 2009, Dr. Wendy Lower, the acclaimed author of Hitler’s Furies, was shown a photograph newly revealed to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. While the documentation of the Holocaust is vast, there are only a few known images of Jewish families at the actual moment of murder, in this disturbing photo, by German officials and Ukrainian collaborators. 

Dr. Lower’s detective work—in Ukraine, Germany, Slovakia, Israel, and the United States—recovers astonishing layers of detail concerning the open-air massacres in Ukraine. Her search for the identities of the victims, of the killers—and, remarkably, of the photographer who openly took the picture, as a secret act of resistance—are dramatically uncovered. Finally, in the hands of this scholar, a single image unlocks a new understanding of the place of the family unit in the history and aftermath of Nazi genocide.

Wendy Lower, Ph.D., is the John K. Roth Professor of History and George R. Roberts Fellow at Claremont McKenna College and chairs the Academic Committee of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and served as its Acting Director at the Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies.  

 

My Familys story Survival Escape and Immigration5. October 19, 2021 | My Family's Story: Survival, Escape, and Immigration

With Daphna Robon

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Daphna Robon tells the story of her parents, Imre Friedmann and Naomi Kraus. Both natives of Budapest, Hungary, they endured not only the antisemitism of pre-war Europe, but the persecution of the Nazi regime; Imre in a labor camp and Naomi hidden in a Swiss “safe house” under a false identity. Following the war, Imre escaped to Vienna where he was able to earn his Ph.D., eventually immigrating to become a professor at Hebrew University in Jerusalem where he met Naomi. She also earned a Ph.D. at the university and they eventually relocated to the U.S. to highly successful careers.

Daphna was born in Israel and spent most of her childhood years in Houston, Texas. She now lives in the Seattle area with her family and began sharing her family story as a Holocaust Center speaker in 2021.  

 

Kucik 1012214. October 12, 2021 | That is 800 Children: Nazi Germany, the United States, and (Dismantling) Global Anti-Blackness

With Dr. Emanuela Kucik

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What is the relationship between Nazi Germany and anti-Blackness—and of the role of the United States in that relationship?  Dr. Emanuela Kucik will provide an expanded narrative of the Holocaust and of racialized violence around the world to better understand the global  intersections of oppressive systems. In showing how these connected structures sustain each other, she will demonstrate that dismantling one piece of systemic oppression will begin to unravel the others. 

Dr. Emanuela Kucik is an Assistant Professor of English and Africana Studies and the Co-Director of the Africana Studies Program at Muhlenberg College. She is committed to intertwining scholarship and activism to highlight how literature can combat genocide, its precursors, and its reverberations.

 

Restitution After WWII3. October 6, 2021 | Restitution After WWII: Suing Hitler's Business Partners - With Professor Michael Bazyler, Chapman University

A Continuing Legal Education (CLE) Program | (CLE credit is no longer available for this presentation)

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The Holocaust was both the greatest mass murder and the greatest theft in modern history. This presentation will discuss how America’s civil justice system provided a measure of long overdue justice to Holocaust victims and heirs. We examine claims for return of Nazi-looted art, stolen Jewish real property in Europe, Holocaust-era insurance policies, slave labor, and bank deposits held by Swiss banks. Our focus will be on both past and ongoing litigation, including the latest Nazi-looted Holocaust case decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2021 (Phillip v. Germany), for which the speaker co-authored an amicus brief. We will also touch upon efforts to use the Holocaust restitution model as a template for other suits involving historical atrocities, including African-American reparations. 

Michael Bazyler is a professor of law and the 1939 Law Scholar in Holocaust and Human Rights Studies at Chapman University. He has authored seven books and more than two dozen law review articles, book chapters, and essays on subjects covering Law and the Holocaust and restitution following genocide and other mass atrocities. 

Thank you to our sponsor: Homestreet Bank. | Thank you to our Community Partners: Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle, Cordozo Society of Washington State, and Foster Garvey. | Thank you to our Lawyers Committee: Ruth Atherton, Marc Boman, Kathy Feldman, Christina MacDonald, Chuck Maduell, Jay Riffkin, Rob Spitzer, Jeff Sprung

CLE Lecture Readings

1. www.swissbankclalims.com: The Legacy and Morality of the Holocaust-Era Settlement with the Swiss Banks. By Michael Bazyler. Fordham International Law Journal.

2. Suing Hitler's Willing Business Partners: American Justice and Holocaust Morality. By Michael Bazyler. Jewish Political Studies Review (Fall 2004)

3. Trading with the Enemy: Holocaust Restitution, the United States Government, and American Industry. By Michael Bazyler and Amber Fitzgerald. Brooklyn Works (2003)

4. Supreme Court Denies Holocaust Victims' Property Claims Against Nazi Germany, Hungary. By Jess Bravin. Wall Street Journal (Feb. 3, 2021)

5. https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/18/18-1447/159037/20201028173235296_Simon%20Philipp%20-%20Amicus%20Brief%20FINAL.pdf

 


2. September 28, 2021 | Ordinary Men Revisited Three Decades Later - ordinary menWith Dr. Christopher Browning

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What turns an ordinary man into a cold-hearted murderer? Nearly 30 years ago, author Christopher Browning brought us the dark history of those whose duty it was to accomplish the Nazi Final Solution in Ordinary Men. The book documented the true story of Reserve Police Battalion 101 of the German Order Police, a paramilitary formation of men comprised of average, middle-aged working class German men who were responsible for mass shootings as well as round-ups of Jewish people for deportation to Nazi death camps in Poland in 1942. Browning’s  book examined how quickly these seemingly ordinary people were twisted by ideological indoctrination, loyalty to the battalion, and ultimately cowardice and bigotry, to sink into the depths of savagery under Hitler to murder millions of Jewish people and other “undesirables.” 

This talk will look at the origins and initial arguments of the book, the critiques it faced in the 1990s, and subsequent developments in Perpetrator Studies.

Thank you to our Community Partners: Amnesty International Seattle Group 4, Jewish Family Service 

 

1. September 21, 2021 | The Light of Days: The Untold Story of Women ResistanceThe Light of Days Fighters in Hitler's Ghettos With Judy Batalion

While conducting research on poet and Special Operations Executive member Hanna Senesh, Judy Batalion unexpectedly found the 1946 Yiddish book, Freuen in di Ghettos (Women in the Ghettos), filled with accounts about young Jewish women who defied the Nazis. These Polish-Jewish “ghetto girls” paid off Gestapo guards, hid revolvers in teddy bears, flirted with Nazis, and shot them. They distributed underground bulletins, flung Molotov cocktails, bombed German supply trains, organized soup kitchens, and were bearers of the truth about what was happening to the Jews. In this discussion, Judy will relay several of these women’s stories, describe her years of research into the history of Polish-Jewish resistance, and discuss why so many of these tales remained hidden for so long.

Join Judy Batalion, New York Times-bestselling author of the highly-acclaimed The Light of Days: The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitler’s Ghettos, published by William Morrow in April 2021. The Light of Days has been published in a young readers’ edition, will be translated into nineteen languages, and has been optioned by Steven Spielberg for a major motion picture for which Judy is co-writing the screenplay. 

 


September 14, 2021 | More Than Any Child Should Know: Holocaust Center Graphic Novel LLlaunches new graphic novel

Watch the Video Recording

Steve Adler personified the remarkable strength and resilience of so many of our local Holocaust survivors, dedicating much of his life to telling his story to inspire students to confront bigotry and indifference and take action.

In 2021, the Holocaust Center began developing a graphic novel based on Steve’s experience during the Kindertransport, which delivered thousands of Jewish children out of Nazi-controlled areas and into safety. 

Recent research from Northwestern and others shows that graphic novels are excellent for readers of all levels as they challenge the brain to interpret both text and images, adding complexity to the storytelling and history.

Join novel co-authors Paul Regelbrugge and Julia Thompson, both team members with the Education department at the Holocaust Center, artist Sean Dougherty, and special guest, Barbara West, Steve Adler's daughter, as they explore the process it took to take Steve’s story from concept to reality.

Thank you to our Community Partners: Amnesty International Seattle Group 4, Jewish Family Service 


July 27, 2021 | Unstoppable: Siggi B. Wilzig’s Astonishing Journey from UnstoppableAuschwitz Survivor and Penniless Immigrant to Wall Street Legend

With author and biographer Joshua M. Greene and special guest Ivan Wilzig, son of Siggi Wilzig

Watch the Video Recording

As a teenager, Siggi Wilzig used his wits to stay alive in Auschwitz, pretending to have trade skills the Nazis could exploit to run the camp. After two death marches and near starvation, he was liberated from Mauthausen and went to work for the U.S. Army hunting Nazis, a service that earned him a visa to America. On arrival, he made three vows: to never go hungry again, to support the Jewish people, and to speak out against injustice. He began his career selling neckties from the trunk of his car, and in little more than a decade rose to become CEO of both a publicly traded oil company and a bank with assets in excess of $4 billion. 

Joshua M. Greene is a renowned Holocaust scholar and filmmaker whose biographies have sold more than a half-million copies worldwide. 

 


July 20, 2021 | Losing and Finding Jewish Identity: A Journey from Post-War Communist Losing and Finding Jewish Identity A Journey from Post War Communist Hungary to America 1Hungary to America With Judy Temes

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In 1969, when Judy Temes was just five years old, she was left by her parents seeking to escape Communist Hungary. With borders sealed, there were few options for crossing the East-West divide. Her father—a Holocaust survivor desperate to leave behind Hungary's totalitarian government and the legacy of the Holocaust—used tourist visas to take his wife and 12-year-old son to the West. These visas came at a high price: one child would need to be left behind. Left with an antisemitic uncle in a destitute Hungarian village, five-year-old "Juditka" had to cope with not only her parent's apparent desertion, but questions about her real identity and what it means to be a Jew. Judy documented her story in the heartrending book, Girl Left Behind.

Judy Temes teaches middle school humanities in Seattle's Torah Day School and is a former business reporter. 

Thank you to our community partner: Torah Day School of Seattle

 


July 13, 2021 |  Resistance Fighter and Holocaust Survivor Carla Peperzak in  71321 Carla PeperzakConversation with Dr. Ray Sun

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In May of 2021 it was announced that a new middle school in Spokane would be named Carla Peperzak Middle School. 

Next year, Carla Peperzak Middle School will invite its students to draw inspiration from its namesake,  a woman who fought the Nazis to save Jewish people during the Holocaust. 

At the age of 18, Carla Peperzak joined the Dutch resistance. She helped save her aunt, uncle, and two cousins, hiding them at a farmhouse in the Dutch countryside. Later, disguised as a German nurse, Carla rescued her young cousin from a deportation train. Throughout the war, she continued to secure hiding places for Jews, published an underground newspaper, and created fake identification papers and ration cards. While Carla and her immediate family survived the Holocaust, 18 members of her family did not. 

Dr. Raymond Sun is Associate Professor of History at Washington State University with a specialty in Holocaust and genocide studies.  

Thanks to our community partners: Washington State University - History Department, Dutch in Seattle, The Woman's Century Club


June 29, 2021  |  How to Use the "Master's Tools"...How To Use the Masters Toolsor NotOr Not with Kendell Pinkney

Embracing our Humanity and Diversity Series Sponsored by Verizon - Part 4 of 4  

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Among the many critical social issues that have filled the headlines over the past years, the push for financial reparations (to address the enduring legacy of American slavery) among some activists has become a hot-button topic that has garnered much debate. While it is impossible to settle such a complex matter, what ideas might Jewish text offer us in our wrestling with such a complex issue?

Kendell Pinkney is a Brooklyn based theatre-maker, Jewish-life consultant, and rabbinical student at the Jewish Theological Seminary. He was recently featured in Saturday Night Seder and on the Crooked Media podcast, Unholier than Thou. His collaborative works have been presented at venues such as 54 Below, Joe’s Pub, the 14th St. Y, and Two River Theatre, to name a few. In addition to his creative work, he is the rabbinic intern for the Jewish arts and culture organizations Reboot and LABA, and serves on the Spiritual Direction team at Ammud: The Jews of Color Torah Academy.

Thank you to our community partners: Northwest African American Museum, Seattle Art Museum, Wing Luke Museum


June 22, 2021  | The History of Anti-Asian Hatred and the WWII Japanese-American Incarceration

The History of Anti Asian Hatred and the WWII Japanese American Incarcerationwith Tom Ikeda

Embracing our Humanity and Diversity Series Sponsored by Verizon - Part 3 of 4  

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Join Tom Ikeda, executive director of Densho, an organization dedicated to preserving, educating, and sharing the story of World War II-era incarceration of Japanese Americans, who will share a brief history of anti-Asian hate in the United States. He will also discuss his own family’s personal experiences during WWII, when his parents and grandparents were incarcerated in the Minidoka, Idaho internment camp, and why this history is important to understanding and improving equity today.

Tom Ikeda is the founding Executive Director of Densho. Tom is a sansei (third-generation Japanese American) who was born and raised in Seattle. In addition to leading the organization over the last 24 years, Tom has conducted more than 250 video-recorded, oral history interviews with Japanese Americans, receiving numerous awards for his community and historical contributions.

Thanks to our community partners: Bainbridge Island Japanese American Exclusion Memorial, Densho, Japanese Cultural & Community Center of Washington, Seattle Art Museum, Wing Luke Museum

 

June 15, 2021 | Becoming Bielski: A Personal Story of the 450x300 Becoming BielskiBielski Partisans with Sharon Rennert

Embracing our Humanity and Diversity Series Sponsored by Verizon - Part 2 of 4 

The Bielski Partisans bravely achieved the largest armed rescue of Jews by Jews during the Holocaust and have grown to tens of thousands of descendants around the world. Their story inspired the Hollywood film “Defiance” starring Daniel Craig as real-life partisan commander Tuvia Bielski. Tuvia’s granddaughter, Sharon Rennert, is a documentary filmmaker who has been exploring her family history for almost two decades. She will share her discoveries about her legacy which has taken her on a worldwide journey from Brooklyn to Belarus and has helped her build a rich family archive that provides uniquely personal insights into the inspirational heroes and survivors of the Bielski Partisans.

Sharon Rennert is a television editor, independent filmmaker, swing dancer, and public speaker. She has been editing documentary and reality programs for over twenty-five years and is an active member of American Cinema Editors and the Motion Picture Editors Guild. She shares the Bielski story whenever possible to help honor the memory of her grandparents and pass this important part of Jewish history on through the generations.

Thanks to our community partners: Seattle Art Museum, Wing Luke Museum


June 8, 2021 | Creative Inspiration: Winners of the 2021 Holocaust Writing, 2021 WAC 450X275Art, & Film Contest

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Join us for this special edition of our Tuesday Lunch-and-Learn program. With more than 577 entries from 55 schools, we'll meet the winners of this year's Holocaust Writing, Art, and Film contest--the students who are carrying on the stories of the Holocaust and transforming this history into action. Learn about what inspired them and join us in celebrating their work.

With special guests, Holocaust survivors Henry Friedman and Carla Peperzak.

For a complete list of the winners and their entries, visit the Writing, Art, & Film Contest page. 

 


June 1, 2021 | If Not Now, When? A Case for Allyship in Difficult Times | With Hilary Bernstein 

If Not Now When A Case for Allyship in Difficult Times With Hilary BernsteinEmbracing our Humanity and Diversity Series - Sponsored by Verizon | Part 1 of 4

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One lesson we have learned from the Holocaust is the terrible cost of complicity. We know what happens when good people choose to look the other way in the face of hatred and bigotry. In 2021, how can we overcome our own tendencies to remain silent when encountering examples of prejudice and bias? Join us to examine a framework for active allyship, along with strategies for engaging in conversations that lead to meaningful connections with others.

Hilary Bernstein is a respected education consultant, with nearly 20 years’ experience facilitating discussions focused on bias, diversity, and creating positive change. Prior to consulting, she was Regional Director of the Anti-Defamation League in the Pacific NW for 15 years, where she addressed antisemitism and other forms of prejudice and bigotry throughout a five-state region.

Thank you to VERIZON for sponsoring this 1st talk in a 4-part series: "Embracing our Humanity and Diversity."

Thanks to our community partners: Anti-Defamation League Pacific Northwest | Seattle Art Museum | Wing Luke Museum   


 

May 25, 2021 | The Train I Missed: A Hidden Child in Holland during the HolocaustThe Train I Missed A Hidden Child in Holland during the Holocaust

A miraculous story of survival, family, and community, the documentary film, “The Train I Missed” follows the journey of retired Dutch businessman, Ernst Van Gelderen, as he revisits his experiences as a hidden child during the Holocaust.

Ernie was a 3-year-old Jewish child growing up in The Hague, Netherlands in 1942 when his parents made the heart-wrenching choice to place him into hiding without them. This begins a miraculous tale of survival and sacrifice set against the horror and tragedy of the Holocaust. Interwoven with the past, Ernst takes us on an emotional journey to revisit the sites of his experiences as a hidden child. 

Michael Kleven and Elke Hautala are performing artists who decided to step behind the camera. They have created over 15 film projects together from short form promotional to music videos to feature documentaries. 

Thanks to our community partner: Herz-ner Tamid

 

 


May 18, 2021 |  One Voice, Two Lives: How Music Saved My Grandfather One Voice Two Lives How Music Save My Grandfather in Auschwitzin Auschwitz

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Award-winning singer Avi Wisnia shares the stories and songs of his grandfather, Cantor David S. Wisnia, tracing his grandfather’s harrowing journey from young Polish singing star to Auschwitz prisoner to American liberator with the 101st Airborne. Cantor Wisnia’s remarkable singing voice helped save him in the Nazi concentration camp.

The program explores the importance of preserving David’s stories of survival, as chronicled in his memoir “One Voice, Two Lives.” Avi touches on the Wisnias’ return to Poland to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, as well as the powerful intergenerational connection featuring music performed by David Wisnia and his grandson. This story highlights the urgency of keeping the memory of the Holocaust alive and passing on this legacy from generation to generation.

 


May 11, 2021 | Fleeing Germany: My Family's StoryFleeing Germany My Familys Story

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Seattle attorney Steve Pruzan is a long way from his grandparents' farm in Germany, yet he feels a deep responsibility to keep their story of escape to the United States alive.  

Steve’s grandparents, Max and Helene Schlonau, owned a large farm in Warmsen, Germany for many generations, a gathering place for nearby family.

In 1938, with Germany under Nazi control, they fled Germany for the United States. Their grandson, Steve Pruzan will share their story of discrimination, escape, tenacity, and eventually rebuilding. 

Steve, a Legacy Speaker on the Holocaust Center's Speakers Bureau, has done extensive research on their lives in Germany and presents primary sources that reveal just how lucky they were to escape and immigrate to the United States. 

Thank you to our community partners: Temple De Hirsch Sinai, Jewish Family Service, Washington State Jewish Historical Society

 


May 4, 2021 | Belonging, and Not Belonging: A Holocaust Survivor's Daughter in the World of Horses 

Horse Crazy coverSarah Maslin Nir in conversation with Dr. Sarah Zaides Rosen

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“Even when I was that young, even before I fully understood what it meant when dad told me he survived the Holocaust, masquerading as a Catholic with a false baptismal certificate when he was just nine years old in Poland, I knew that somehow I was an outsider in the world I had become infatuated with – the world of ponies.” - Sarah Maslin Nir

Sarah Maslin Nir is an award-winning staff reporter for The New York Times and author of the acclaimed, Horse Crazy: The Story of a Woman and a World in Love with an Animal.

Dr. Sarah Zaides Rosen received her PhD at the University of Washington and currently serves as the Associate Director of the Stroum Center for Jewish Studies at the University of Washington as well as the Director of the Graduate Fellowship Program. She is also a competitive equestrian. 

 


April 27, 2021 |  My Family and the Rwandan Genocide presented by Paul Karemera

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Paul Kameraa

Even though they had fled Rwanda years prior to its civil war, the far-reaching events of the war and genocide still had deep impacts on Paul Karemera and his family. Paul tells the story of his family in Rwanda and Uganda, the history of Rwandan conflict between the Hutu and Tutsi people, and the events of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.


Paul’s grandparents on both sides of his family left their homes in Rwanda in 1959 and became refugees in neighboring Uganda.  They belonged to the Tutsi tribe – the group targeted in the Rwandan genocide. As a young student, Paul was harassed and bullied as an outsider in Uganda, despite having been born there.  Shortly after the genocide, Paul went back to Rwanda as a “returnee” to the country.  Many friends and family had not survived.  Nationwide, the genocide’s wounds were still raw. Gacaca courts for restorative justice were instituted, but many Hutu perpetrators were never apprehended. 

Paul is the newest member of the Holocaust Center’s Speakers Bureau and the first member who speaks about the Rwandan genocide. 

Thanks to our community partners: Together We Remember Coalition, Pacific Lutheran University's Holocaust and Genocide Studies Program    


April 20, 2021 | Experiences of Syrian Women: Revolution, War, and Uncertainty presented by Ahed Festuk and Hope Leone

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Join the Multifaith Alliance for Syrian Refugees (MFA) to learn about the humanitarian crisis confronting the women of Syria in the 10th year of the brutal civil war. Learn about the situation on theHope Leone ground, MFA’s relief efforts, and hear first-hand from Ahed Festuk, an activist from Aleppo, who was among the earliest protest organizers and relief workers—and now works to deliver desperately needed aid to her native country.

This program features:
Ahed Festuk, MFA’s Manager of Humanitarian Relief, an activist from Aleppo, Syria, and one of Syria's pioneer women demonstrators. In 2019, she joined the Multifaith Alliance for Syrian Refugees as Manager of Humanitarian Relief and is a prominent member of the Syrian Women's Political Movement.

Hope Leone, MFA’s Coordinator of Development & Cultivation who previously led a student organization called No Lost Generation, founded to support Syrian refugees by promoting awareness, organizing advocacy on Capitol Hill, fundraising, and creating educational resources for refugees. 

Thank you to The Frances Roth & Stanley R. Schill Foundation for sponsoring this presentation

Thank you to community partners:  Together We Remember Coalition, Pacific Lutheran University's Holocaust and Genocide Studies Program


April 13, 2021 | Love, Resilience, and Creativity during Genocide and Mass Atrocities Presented by Dr. Marie Berry

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Over the past 15 years of studying genocide and mass atrocities, Marie Berry has interviewed more than 300 women who have survived unfathomable horrors in places like Rwanda and Bosnia-Herzegovina. While many told stories of fear, loss, and pain, what sticks with her today is how so many women also described loving deeply, finding humor, building communities, and not only surviving, but even thriving during and after the violence. 

In this talk, Dr. Berry will show how during periods of mass atrocity, human beings have long resisted through solidarity, art, non-violent direct action, and other creative strategies to reclaim their humanity together. These forms of everyday resistance are critical for us to understand to improve our ability to stop genocide and other mass atrocities going forward. 

Marie Berry is an Associate Professor at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver and the author of “War, Women, and Power” from Cambridge University Press (2018).

Thank you to The Frances Roth & Stanley R. Schill Foundation for sponsoring this presentation

Thank you to our community partners:  Together We Remember Coalition, Pacific Lutheran University's Holocaust and Genocide Studies Program


April 8, 2021 | Yom Hashoah: Holocaust Remembrance Day

Remembering the 6 million Jewish people and the millions of Non-Jewish people murdered in the Holocaust

The program included:

Ingrid and Maud: A Holocaust Story of a Rescuer and the Rescued

Featuring special guests Ingrid Steppic and Maud Dahme.  Ingrid and Maud met when they were young girls - one Jewish and seeking refuge from the Nazis, the other part of a family helping to hide Jewish people. Join us for a live conversation with these two women for Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day.  

Candle Lighting

Bring a candle and turn on your camera to join the community candle lighting ceremony. Followed by guest speaker Rabbi Tamar Malino of Spokane's Temple Beth Shalom.

Remembering as a Community

Let us know who you are remembering/honoring on this Day of Remembrance so that we can acknowledge them during the program. You will have the option of including a name (or names) when you register for the event. 

Thanks to community partners: Congregation Ezra Bessaroth, Herzl-Ner Tamid, Temple Beth Shalom Spokane, Stroum Jewish Community Center, JConnect Seattle, Seattle Central College, North Seattle College, North Seattle College Office of Equity, Diversity & Inclusion, South Seattle College, Temple B'Nai Torah, Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle, Temple De Hirsch Sinai, Jewish Family Services, Anti-Defamation League Pacific Northwest, Together We Remember Coalition, Sephardic Bikur Holim Congregation


America and the Holocaust series: Part Three of ThreeCopy of Liberated not free Insta

March 30, 2021 | Liberated, But Not Free: Jewish Holocaust Survivors and American Forces in Postwar Germany Presented by Dr. Kierra Crago-Schneider

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The United States is often argued to have been a strong friend of the She’erith Hapletah, or surviving remnant of European Jewry living in postwar Displaced Persons camps in Germany. But a closer examination of relations between members of these two parties illustrate a much
more nuanced, and on occasion contentious, series of interactions—ranging from aid and support to outright antisemitism and hostility. These ever-changing relations were often influenced by external world events and political shifts, which affected the status of Jewish Displaced Persons within American-controlled centers.n>

Dr. Kierra Crago-Schneider is the Campus Outreach Program Officer in the National Academic Programs Division of the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Her current manuscript, From Barter to Black Market: The Re-Criminalization of the Jews in Germany, focuses on Jewish Displaced Persons’ interactions with their non-Jewish neighbors, international care-givers, and American troops in the American zone of occupied Germany from 1945-1957.
(photo credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration, College Park)

Thank you to our community partners on this week's program: Amnesty International Group 4


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March 23, 2021 | Varian Fry's Moment of Glory 

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American journalist Varian Fry’s experiences covering Germany under Hitler’s rule provoked him into action, creating the Emergency Rescue Committee, a private America relief organization, with the goal of rescuing endangered intellectuals in France. Author Sheila Isenberg uses Fry’s own words and the testimony of refugees and compatriots to vividly paint the tense atmosphere of wartime Marseille, where desperate refugees found precarious asylum.

Isenberg describes the inventive measures Fry took to save more than 2,000 people, far more than the 200 intellectuals, scientists, writers, and artists he had originally been assigned to aid. Convening a network of people to assist him, Fry was able to arrange escapes from internment camps, forge documents, and bribe officials to spirit away to safety people threatened by the Nazis. In 1994, his efforts were recognized as he became the first American to be honored by Yad Vashem as "Righteous Among the Nations."

Isenberg is the author of several books including A Hero of Our Own: The Story of Varian Fry (click here for ebook); Muriel’s War: An American Heiress in the Nazi Resistance; and Women Who Love Men Who Kill.

Thank you to our community partners on this week's program: Pacific Lutheran University, UW Communication Department


America and the Holocaust series: Part One of Three

March 16, 2021 |  Burying the Holocaust in the Pages of The
New York Times

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During World War II, The New York Times published over 1,800 detailed, timely stories about what was happening to Europe's Jews, almost all of which appeared inside the newspaper. Northeastern University Journalism Professor Laurel Leff will discuss why The Times decided to bury the story of the murder of Europe's Jews and how that fateful decision affected contemporary understandings of the cataclysmic event. 

Laurel Leff is Professor of Journalism and Associate Director of Jewish Studies at Northeastern University in Boston.

Thank you to community partners: Common Good Foundation, UW Communication 


March 9, 2021 | CLE & Public Program | The Crime of Complicity: CLE compl header 450x275
Law and the Bystander from the Holocaust to Today

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12:00 to 1:00 pm PT | Open to all 

1 Washington State Bar CLE Credit | Flyer

Speaker Amos N. Guiora, Professor of Law at the S.J. Quinney College of Law at the University of Utah

Join the Holocaust Center for Humanity and legal professionals from around Washington for a special legal CLE program and Lunch-and-Learn on Tuesday, March 9 on the Crime of Complicity: Law and the Bystander from the Holocaust to Today with Professor Amos N. Guiora. 

In addressing the bystander from the perspective of a crime of omission, one of the most important questions is whether we are examining a legal or ethical dilemma. Professor Amos Guiora proposes that the most appropriate lens is that of a strict legal examination. Others suggest this is an ethical dilemma rather than a legal dilemma. In his lecture, Professor Guiora will address this conflict by presenting the competing tensions between law and ethics.

Professor Guiora has an A.B. in history from Kenyon College, a J.D. from Case Western Reserve University School of Law, and a Ph.D from Leiden University. He has published extensively both in the United States and Europe on issues related to national security, limits of interrogation, religion and terrorism, the limits of power, multiculturalism, and human rights. 

For Legal Professionals:

If you would like to watch the recording for CLE credit please fill out the Self Viewing Attendance form first.  The form can be found here.
 
After watching the recording you will need to self-report your attendance to the WA State Bar Association. 
 
The reading materials for this program can be found here.
 
The Evaluation for this program can be found here
 

Thank you to our event sponsor: HomeStreet Bank

Thanks to our community partners: Washington State Bar Association's Civil Rights Law Section and World Peace Through Law Section, Common Good Foundation, Karr Tuttle Campbell, ACLU Washington, Perkins Coie


March 2, 2021| A Global Journey to Safety with Holocaust
Survivor Henry Haas

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Henry Haas’ story of survival echoes that of thousands of Jewish families trying to escape from Nazi-occupied territories. With few options, the Haas family’s arduous journey out of Berlin lasted a year, leading a nomadic existence until finally escaping to Shanghai, China—the only port that would accept them.

A city of 6 million at that time, the Haas family arrived in Shanghai without funds, in a temperature of 105 degrees Fahrenheit, and encountered an entirely foreign culture and now under Japanese occupation.

Two years after the end of WWII, the family arrived as non-English speaking refugees in San Francisco. The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), helped the Haas family come to America, where they finally settled in Tacoma, Washington.

Henry’s wife, Kate, has documented the Haas family story in great detail. Together, Henry and Kate, with the use of photos, maps, and historic family documents, tell the story. Henry and his late mother Gerda, who lived to age 98, told this story for many years to school classes and other groups in the Tacoma area. Henry is part of the Holocaust Center for Humanity’s Speakers Bureau to further share his memoir of antisemitism during the Holocaust.

Thank you to our community partners on this week's program: Temple Beth El (Tacoma)


February 23, 2021 | In My Hands: Rescuer Irene Gut OpdykeJeanie Opdyke Smith 223
presented by Jeannie Opdyke Smith

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>Jeannie Opdyke Smith shares her mother's incredible journey of courage and resilience. A true story of how one Polish Catholic teenager saved over a dozen Jews during the Holocaust. Irene received international recognition for her actions during the Holocaust while working for a high-ranking German official.

Irene's story became a Broadway play in the nationally acclaimed production "Irena's Vow" and her memoir, "In My Hands" is used in classrooms across the country. The Israeli Holocaust Commission named Irene one of the Righteous Among the Nations. She was presented with the Israel Medal of Honor at Jerusalem's Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial.

Jeannie is a recipient of the 2015 Civil Rights award given by the Anti-Defamation League. She resides in Washington state with her husband, Gary, and is the mother of three, a foster parent, a grandmother of five, and surrogate mother to dozens more. Jeannie travels sharing her mother's story with groups across the U.S., Canada, and the U.K. The story she shares speaks to the horrors and hate of the Holocaust—but also brings a message of faith, love, and hope, that good can triumph over evil. It proclaims the conviction that one by one, we can say no to hatred, persecution, and prejudice.

 


February 16, 2021 | Among the Remnants: Holocaust Survivor Josh Gortler  Josh Gortler 216

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When 3-year-old Joshua Gortler and his family were forced from their hometown in Poland during World War II, they scrambled for safety border over the border, finding refuge at last in Europe's Displaced Persons Camps.

Undocumented and unschooled, Gortler spent his adolescence learning to survive. When his family eventually relocated to the U.S., Gortler found himself starting over as a teenager in a foreign land with only his spunk and sharp wits to rely on.

After earning a Master's degree in social work, Josh moved to Seattle and worked at the Kline Galland Jewish nursing home for almost 50 years. He began telling his story when his grandchildren asked what happened to him during the Holocaust, and he is now an active member of the Holocaust Center for Humanity's Speakers Bureau and Board of Directors.

Josh Gortler's memoir, Among the Remnants, was published in January 2020.

Thank you to our community partners on this week's program:  Kline Galland, The Summit at First Hill, Congregation Ezra Bessaroth, Chabad of Downtown Seattle, Sephardic Bikur Holim Congregation, the Consulate of the Republic of Poland in Seattle, Polish Home Association


February 9, 2021 | From Genocide to Emergence in Our Homeland:Hillaire
An Introduction to Coast Salish History by Children of the Setting Sun

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With Darrell Hillaire, Executive Director and Co-Founder of Children of the Setting Sun Productions. Follow in the journey of the Coast Salish people from European contact, through their experiences with disease, boarding schools, forced relocation, Christianity, and into today’s times where we begin to see an emergence of culture and language in tribal communities. 

Darrell Hillaire is a member of Lummi Nation, great-grandson of Frank Hillaire, who, in 1920, formed the Children of the Setting Sun Song and Dance Group. From Darrell: "Our traditional Lummi song and dance group included several of his grandchildren, and was formed as a response to rapid colonial settlement which included making illegal the traditional Coast Salish cultural practices including song, dance, language, and gatherings such as the potlatch.

"Prior to his passing, Frank Hillaire instructed his grandchildren and future descendants to, 'Keep My Fires Burning.' I have endeavored to follow his instructions throughout my lifetime, from serving as Chairperson and Treasurer of Lummi Indian Business Council for many years (15), to providing a home for our children by building and running the Lummi Youth Academy for 13 years, and more recently, as Executive Director and Co-Founder of Children of the Setting Sun Productions (CSSP). CSSP is a Native owned and operated 501C3, located in Bellingham, Washington within 5 miles of the Lummi Nation. I lead the projects based upon lifetime relationships with many elders and spiritual leaders within the Coast Salish Territory and have grown close to many of the elders through the development of Children of the Setting Sun Production content."  Photo by Hailey Hoffman.

Thank you to our partners on this week's program: The Duwamish Tribe, Eighth Generation, National Urban Indian Family Coalition, Potlatch Fund


February 2, 2021 | "Who Was Chief Seattle?" with author David BuergeWho Was chief seattle 450x275

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Chief Seattle wrote nothing down during his life, yet his words—both real and imagined—are known throughout the world. The result is a man-made up of both historical and fictional aspects, from which conflicting messages can be gleaned.

David Buerge, a historian, teacher, and writer, has been researching the pre- and early history of the City of Seattle since the mid-1970s. He has published fourteen books of history and biography. Buerge’s latest book, published by our partner
Sasquatch Books, is Chief Seattle and the Town that Took His Name," the first biography of Chief Seattle intended for adults.

Thank you to our community partners on this program: Humanities Washington, The Duwamish Tribe, 
Eighth Generation, National Urban Indian Family Coalition, Potlatch Foundation, UW American Indian Studies program


HolocaustCenter Charlotte 5 23 17 40 450x250 CopyrightJanuary 19, 2021 | Holocaust Survivor Charlotte Wollheim

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Born in Germany, Charlotte Wollheim remembers a happy childhood. All of this began to change when the Nazi party came to power in 1933. As Jewish people's lives became increasingly threatened, her parents sent Charlotte and her sister to the Esslingen Jewish Orphanage while they tried to find a way out of Germany. Not even 10 years old, it was a frightening experience. Charlotte's family made it to the United States, but not before her father was arrested multiple times, her grandfather's home was vandalized, and their lives were endangered. 

In 1988, Charlotte teamed up with Holocaust survivor Vladka Meed to organize summer trips to Poland for teachers to learn about the Holocaust. These trips became a turning point for hundreds of educators in their understanding and commitment to Holocaust education. Charlotte is a member of the Holocaust Center's Speakers Bureau.  Photo by Stefanie Felix.

Thank you to our community partner on this program:  Goethe Pop Up Seattle | Holocaust and Jewish Resistance Teachers' Program


Paulina Andrews LunchandLearn Image 450x275.2January 12, 2021 | The Power of Personal Stories: UW Students Grapple with Stories of Survival and Loss

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When students signed up for Professor Rawan Arar's "Genocide and Law" class at the UW, they quickly learned that this class was going to tackle more than text - it was going to challenge their emotions and their human understanding.  The situations they would be studying were not just events, but were real people's lives. Working with the Holocaust Center for Humanity, students were assigned to interview survivors of genocide and their descendants. In this special program, students will join with the survivors to provide a candid view of interviewing, being interviewed, and the lessons learned.

Image: Art by UW student Paulina Andrews who took Professor Arar's class in the spring of 2020. Paulina's drawing is inspired by a survivor of the Cambodian genocide. 

Thank you to our community sponsor on this program: UW Stroum Center for Jewish Studies


January 5, 2021 | Three Roads - How One Family Embodied The Sweep of 20th Century Jewish History

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Seattle author David Laskin draws on his award-winning book The Family to recount the story of the three branches of his mother's Russian-Jewish family: one branch immigrated to the United States and went into business, founding the fabulous Maidenform Bra Company; one branch journeyed to Palestine and made the desert bloom as idealistic Zionist pioneers; the third branch remained behind and perished in the Holocaust.  Laskin illustrates the talk with vivid slides not only of his relatives but of the historic events they experienced.  

Born in Brooklyn, David Laskin grew up on Long Island hearing stories of struggle and survival told by his Russian-Jewish immigrant grandparents.  Settling in Seattle with his wife and three daughters in 1993, Laskin has won wide acclaim for his journalism and his narrative nonfiction books recounting the lives of ordinary people caught up in the great movements of history.  Four of his recent books, including The Family, have won the Washington State Books Award.  Laskin's first novel, What Sammy Knew, will be published by Penguin in March, 2021.  

You can purchase The Family from our community partner and local bookseller, Madison Books!


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December 15, 2020 | The S.S. Officer's Armchair: Uncovering the Hidden Life Of A Nazi | With author Daniel Lee, in conversation with journalist Knute Berger

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During a dinner party in Florence a few years ago, Daniel Lee was told a very strange story; a guest recounted how her mother had recently taken an armchair to an upholsterer in Amsterdam. While repairing the chair, the upholsterer found a bundle of swastika-covered documents inside the chair’s cushion. The papers belonged to Dr. Robert Griesinger, a lawyer from Stuttgart, who joined the S.S. and worked at the Reich’s Ministry of Economics and Labour in Occupied Prague during the war. An expert in the history of the Holocaust, Lee was fascinated to know what part Griesinger had played in the Third Reich and how his most precious documents ended up hidden inside a chair, hundreds of miles from Prague and Stuttgart. The SS Officer's Armchair is a detective story and a reconsideration of daily life in the Third Reich. 

Daniel Lee is a senior lecturer in modern history at Queen Mary, University of London. A specialist in the history of Jews in France and North Africa during the Second World War, he completed his doctorate at the University of Oxford, and is also the author of Pétain's Jewish Children. As a BBC Radio 3 New Generation Thinker, Lee is a regular broadcaster on radio. He lives in north London. 

Knute Berger's journalism has exposed much of the Northwest's local history and has been featured in numerous publications.  He is currently the editor at large for Crosscut, and has previously served as editor for Seattle Weekly and Seattle Magazine. He is the host of Mossback’s Northwest on KCTS and PBS which features dozens of short 5 minute videos uncovering facts about our local infrastructure, culture, and history.

Thank you to our community partners on this week's program: Seattle U History Department | UW History Department | Evergreen College Alumni Association


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December 8, 2020 | Hidden in Hungary: The Survival Story of Agi Day

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“My mother, my sister, my grandmother were hidden in a convent, dressed as nuns... I was too young to be in the convent, so I was hidden with a Catholic family, a couple [with] no children. They pretended I was a cousin from the countryside." - Agi Day

Agi Day was born in Belgrade, Yugoslavia on May 13, 1940. When the Nazis invaded that country in 1941, she and her family fled, walking 196 miles to Budapest, Hungary. Agi’s mother convinced a local priest to hide Agi, age 4, her sister, age 16, herself and her mother in the priest’s apartment. Later, her family was hidden in a convent, but Agi, too young for the convent, was sent to live with two different Catholic families who passed her off as their cousin from the countryside. Agi was not reunited with her family until after liberation, May 1, 1945. With no home to return to, Agi, her mother, and sister, resided in a Displaced Persons Camp in Bad Gastein, Austria. Agi immigrated to Toronto, Canada in 1951 and later to the Seattle area. Agi is a member of the Holocaust Center for Humanity's Speakers Bureau.

Thank you to our community partners on this program: Austrian Honorary Consulate | Hungarian American Assoc. of Washington | Honorary Consulate of Austria in Seattle | Alliance Francaise de Seattle


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December 1, 2020 | Building Bridges: Latinx Representation in a Holocaust Museum

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With Dr. Michelle Tovar, Associate Director of Education-Latino Initiatives at Holocaust Museum Houston. For many communities, a Holocaust museum represents a rare space to discuss hatred, prejudice, and apathy openly. In the last few years, Holocaust Museum Houston has created an opportunity to amplify diverse voices and narratives that are not commonly recognized. In this presentation, Dr. Michelle Tovar will discuss the significance of Latinx representation in Holocaust museums and how the work she has done has helped shape programming, exhibits, and cross-cultural engagement. 

Dr. Michelle Tovar is responsible for building bridges between the Latino community and the Holocaust Museum Houston. Her initiatives include outreach to bilingual/dual language school programs; creating educational workshops and events for teachers, parents, and community leaders; and working with local and national organizations dedicated to serving Latinos. Michelle earned her EdD at the University of Houston in Curriculum and Instruction in K-12 Social Education with an emphasis on Social Justice Education. She was a Smithsonian Latino Museum Studies Fellow and a 2017 and 2019 Fulbright-Hays Scholar. 

Thank you to our community partners on this program: Holocaust Museum Houston | Latino Initiatives - Holocaust Museum Houston | CIELO | Seattle Latino Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce

 

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November 24, 2020 | Resilience and Strength: My Mother's Survival from Auschwitz

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Daughter of Dutch survivor of Auschwitz, Ine-Marie van Dam shares her mother's story. Ada van Esso was born in Holland to a Jewish family. After World War II began, Ada’s father planned for the family to escape Holland. He bribed officials who were to assist them in their escape, but the family was betrayed. They were sent to a prison in Berlin, and then deported to Auschwitz in 1943. Ada left Auschwitz in 1945 on a death march. She was liberated at Ravensbrück Concentration Camp and taken to Sweden to recover.

After the war, Ada returned to Holland and married Hans van Dam. Ine-Marie van Dam was born in Holland several years after, and grew up on the Dutch Caribbean island of Curaçao. Ine and her family moved to the Pacific Northwest at age 9. 

In 2019, Ine began presenting the story of her mother’s Holocaust survival as a Legacy Speaker with the Holocaust Center for Humanity. Ada lives in Seattle in an assisted living facility. Ine visits her often from her home in Centralia, WA, and still speaks to her mother in Dutch. Photo: Ine-Marie van Dam with her mother Ada. 

Thank you to our community partner on this program: The Washington State Jewish Historical Society. 


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November 17, 2020 | Technology, the Holocaust, and Human Rights

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With Professor Clyde Ford, author of Think Black.  THINK BLACK (HarperCollins, Sept. 2019), began as a memoir about Clyde Ford's father, John Stanley Ford, the first Black software engineer in America. But it soon became something much more, after his editor asked him to investigate his father’s relationship with Thomas J. Watson, the founder of IBM.

Clyde Ford went in search of an answer. Ford was shocked, and deeply disturbed, to uncover IBM’s central role in eugenics, the Holocaust, apartheid, and racial profiling through facial recognition. What began as a story about his father, soon enlarged into a cautionary tale about the dark side of high technology and recommendation about what must change.  

Clyde W. Ford is an award-winning author of 12 works of fiction and non-fiction. He’s also a psychotherapist, mythologist, and sought-after public speaker. Clyde’s the recipient of the 2006 Zora Neale Hurston-Richard Wright Award in African American Literature. He’s been a featured guest on the Oprah Winfrey Show, National Public Radio, and numerous television and radio programs. Clyde lives in Bellingham, Washington.

Thank you to our community partners on this program: Black Heritage Society Washington State | Langston Huges Performing Arts Center | NAACP Seattle, King County | Queen Anne Book Company


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November 10, 2020 | Finding Refuge in Shanghai: Holocaust Survivor Joe Lewinsohn

Joe Lewinsohn was born in Berlinchen, Germany on May 16, 1937. On Kristallnacht (November 9-10, 1938), the family’s store was vandalized. His father Edwin and 10,000 other Jewish men were arrested and spent weeks in Buchenwald, a German concentration camp. In 1939, scared for their lives, the Lewinsohns fled Germany for Shanghai, their only option. For six years, Joe’s family shared a room with three other refugee families in the decrepit Shanghai ghetto. When the war ended, they went to Chile to live alongside over 10,000 Jews who had spent the wartime years there.

In 1949, Joe and his family came to Seattle. Joe graduated from Garfield High School and joined the Army. Upon his discharge, he attended the University of Washington and began a teaching career in the Seattle School District. Since 2017, Joe has been a member of the Holocaust Center for Humanity's Speakers Bureau.  Watch Video Recording

Thank you to our community partner on this week's program: Moishe House Seattle


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November 3, 2020 | Hana Kern: The Legacy of Theresienstadt 

Hana Kern, the daughter of Theresienstadt survivor Tom Lenda, shares her father's experiences. Tom Lenda was one of the very few Jewish children to survive the camp Theresienstadt in Czechoslovakia.  

Three years after the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia on March 15, 1939, Tom and his family were ordered to take one suitcase each and report to Exhibition Hall in Prague where over 1,000 Jewish people had been rounded up by Nazi authorities. From there they were taken by train to Terezin (Theresienstadt), a concentration camp 40 miles north of Prague. The family was separated after their arrival at Terezin and, contrary to Nazi propaganda attempting to show that this was a desirable Jewish settlement, they endured severe overcrowding, rats, straw beds, poverty and illness, as well as the deportations of so many to Auschwitz. Tom was part of the Holocaust Center for Humanity's Speakers Bureau for many years. His daughter Hana Kern now shares his story.  Watch Video Recording 

Thank you to our community partners on this week's program: Center for Czech Education and Culture | Women Business Owners


News Literate Slide 450x275October 27, 2020 | What It Means To Be "News-Literate"

With John Silva, News Literacy Project. John Silva will provide an overview of essential news literacy skills to stay reliably informed. He will discuss the difficulty in, and importance of recognizing news vs. opinion, how to identify misinformation and evaluate evidence, and how to discern various types and forms of bias. John Silva is the Sr. Director of Education, Training, for the News Literacy Project. Watch Video Recording 

Thank you to our community partners on this program: The Foundation for International Understanding Through Students | Leage of Education Voters

 

 


America and the Holocaust: 3-Part Lunch-America and the Holocaust 500x200and-Learn Series 

October 6, 13, 20  | Co-Sponsored by the Holocaust and Genocide Studies Program and the Kurt Mayer Chair of Holocaust Studies at Pacific Lutheran University | Flyer (pdf)

Thank you to our generous supporter: The Powell Family Foundation

 

 

  • hell before their very eyesOctober 6 | Hell Before Their Very Eyes: American Soldiers Liberate Concentration Camps in Germany

With Dr. John McManus, Military Historian, who sheds new light on a relatively overlooked aspect of the Holocaust, namely the experiences of American soldiers who liberated or witnessed concentration camps. Drawing on the rich blend of archival sources and first hand accounts, including unit journals, interviews, oral histories, memoirs, diaries, letters, and published recollections that provided the foundation for his book "Hell Before Their Very Eyes," he will discuss the realities of the liberation of Ohrdruf, Buchenwald and Dachau. In case you missed it - Watch Video Recording

 

  • rescue board coverOctober 13 | Rescue Board: The Untold Story of America's Efforts to Save the Jews of Europe

With Dr. Rebecca Erbelding, Historian, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and author of Rescue Board.  America has long been criticized for refusing to give harbor to the Jews during World War II as Hitler and the Nazis closed in. Yet few know the extraordinary unknown story of the War Refugee Board, a US government effort late in the war to save the remaining European Jews.  In January 1944, facing mounting public pressure and pressure within his administration to do more to aid European Jews, President Franklin Roosevelt agreed to create a new government agency, the War Refugee Board, empowering it to rescue the victims of Nazi persecution.  Over the next twenty months, John Pehle, the young Treasury Department lawyer tasked with heading this operation, pulled together D.C. pencil pushers, international relief workers, smugglers, diplomats, millionaires, and rabble-rousers to run operations across four continents and a dozen countries. They tricked Nazis, forged identity papers, maneuvered food and medicine into concentration camps, recruited spies, leaked news stories, laundered money, negotiated ransoms, and funneled millions of dollars into Europe. This is the story of how the United States War Refugee Board saved tens of thousands of lives. In case you missed it - Watch Video Recording

 

  • Hollywood and antisemitism coverOctober 20 | Atrocity Pictures: Antisemitism, the Holocaust, and the Hollywood Studio System Before 1948

With Dr. Steven Carr, Indiana University-Purdue University, Fort Wayne, and author of Hollywood & Anti-Semitism. Much of the discussion about Hollywood and anti-Semitism has assumed anti-Semitism came out of Hollywood. Less attention has considered antisemitism directed toward Hollywood. With both increasing political instability and the resurgence of organized hate groups in the U.S., anti-Semitic allegations of Jewish control over the media today remain poised to regain mainstream traction. This informal Q&A will discuss how anti-Semitic allegations of Jewish control over Hollywood helped shape popular depictions of Nazism and the Holocaust in mainstream Hollywood film. With the memory of World War I still fresh in the minds of many Americans, along with a growing isolationist alliance against President Roosevelt, the Hollywood studio system throughout the 1930s and 40s found itself caught between intensifying public opinion accusing the industry of either not doing enough to combat Nazism, or accusing it of pushing the country into war to serve Jewish interests.  Watch Video Recording

 

Thank you to our community partners for supporting the America and the Holocaust series:

Museum Educators of Puget Sound | Museum of Flight | Northwest Film Forum | Puget Sound Honor Flight | Southwest Seattle Historical Society | Washington State Archives


 

Luis Ortega 450x275September 29, 2020 | Practice Radical Empathy: Storytelling to Build an Equitable World

Join Luis Ortega, founder and director of Storytellers for Change, as he delivers an engaging and empowering message about the power of storytelling and story-listening to foster radical empathy, promote dialogue, and to build an inclusive and equitable world. In this virtual presentation, Luis will invite the audience to explore the role of connection, empathy, and belonging in communities. How do we co-create spaces for connection? How can we expand our empathetic capacity?  What does belonging mean to you? A key part of the answer to these questions is stories. After all, what brings us closer to each other is knowing our individual and collective narratives. When a community or society has the ability to know, see, and hear the stories of everyone, we can expand our "circle of human concern" and close empathy gaps. 

Thank you to our community partners on this program: The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Discovery Center | Unexpected Productions Improv

 


 

September 15, 2020 | How the Holocaust Shaped SenatorScoop Jackson 450x275 Scoop Jackson’s Human Rights Work 

Speakers Anna Marie Laurence and Craig Gannett. As a U.S. Senator from Washington State, Henry M. “Scoop” Jackson was a strong advocate for human rights and religious freedom. In the 1970s, he pressured the Soviet Union to allow the emigration of Jews, many of whom were being persecuted. His commitment to human rights can be traced back to 1945, when he entered Buchenwald just three days after the death camp was liberated. Scoop’s daughter, Anna Marie Laurence, will share photos of items he received at the camp, and the President of the Henry M. Jackson Foundation, Craig Gannett, will explain how the unspeakable horrors he saw there led him to champion the 1974 Jackson-Vanik Amendment, which in turn led to the Magnitsky Act of 2012 and the Global Magnitsky act of 2016, allowing the U.S. government to sanction foreign government officials implicated in human rights abuses anywhere in the world.

Thank you to our community partners on this program: The Jackson Foundation | Historic Seattle | Washington State Historical Society | Henry M. Jackson High School

Thank you to 4Culture King County for grant funding in support of the acquisition of artifacts, including these from Henry M. "Scoop" Jackson.


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September 8, 2020 | A Childhood in Nazi Germany: Barbara Sachs D'Asaro 

Andrea and Joanna D’Asaro and their mother Barbara Sachs D’Asaro tell the story of Barbara’s childhood in Nazi Germany, and her escape as a young girl. Barbara was born Bärbel Sachs near Rostock, Germany on August 18, 1927. She was adopted by a Jewish couple, Erich and Johanna Sachs, who lived in Berlin. Barbara’s parents bribed officials to destroy documents about her adoption, which noted that a non-Jewish child had been adopted into a Jewish family. Join us for this incredible and unique story of determination, luck, and love. Barbara, Joanna, and Andrea are part of the Holocaust Center's Speakers Bureau. 

Thank you to our community partners on this program: Seattle Genealogical Society | Cornell Club of Western Washington 

   

  


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September 2, 2020 | Law as an Instrument of Mass Crimes? The Legal System Under the Third Reich

Speaker: Lawrence Douglas, James J. Grosfeld Professor of Law, Jurisprudence & Social Thought, Amherst College.  Join the Holocaust Center for Humanity, and legal professionals from around Washington state, for a special virtual Lawyers CLE program with Professor Lawrence Douglas on Law as an instrument of Mass Crimes and the Legal System Under the Third Reich. Hitler’s Germany disturbingly demonstrated how a legal system can become an instrument of state sponsored mass atrocities.

This talk will examine questions such as: How did the Nazi state succeed in perverting the German legal system? What role did prominent lawyers and judges play in resisting or assisting the perversion? Are there limits to which law can be perverted before it ceases to function as law? What lessons can we apply from the German case to challenges facing lawyers today? 

Thank you to our event partners: Perkins Coie | Karr Tuttle Campbell | Cardozo Society of Washington State | The Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle

 

It is not too late to receive 1 Ethics Credit. If you missed this legal program on September 2, 2020 and you are an attorney seeking ethics credit, it is not too late to participate. To watch this program for 1 Ethics credit, please register here.

Materials for the program: Article #1 | Article #2  | Evaluation Form

Questions? Email Nicole Bela, Director of Development at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..


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August 25, 2020 | Let It Not Happen Again: Lessons of the Japanese American Exclusion

With speaker Clarence Moriwaki. In March of 1942, 227 Japanese Americans were forcibly removed from their homes on Bainbridge Island by the US Army. Starting with this small community, a national strategy began, with more than 120,000 Japanese American men, women, and children forcibly removed and incarcerated during World War II.

Clarence Moriwaki shares the story of Bainbridge Island—the origin point of the Japanese American exclusion—to provide a human, historical account of this national tragedy, and to ask the question: Are there parallels to what’s happening in America now? 

Moriwaki is the president of the Bainbridge Island Japanese American Community and a founder and former president of the Bainbridge Island Japanese American Exclusion Memorial Association. Moriwaki has written guest editorials on the subject that have been published nationwide. Moriwaki has served as a spokesperson for administrations including the Clinton Administration, the Office of the Governor, and Congressman Jay Inslee. Moriwaki lives on Bainbridge Island and is a member of Humanities Washington Speakers Bureau.

Thank you to our community partners on this program: Humanities Washington | The Consulate General of Japan in Seattle | JACL | Japanese Cultural and Community Center of Washington | Keiro Northwest.


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August 18, 2020 | The Yellow Star House: The Remarkable Story of One Boy's Survival in a Protected House in Hungary 

With author Paul Regelbrugge. Paul Regelbrugge, a teacher in Spokane, WA at the time, asked survivor Robert Holczer to come and speak to his 6th grade class. His students were enthralled by the unique story of Robert and the motivations of his rescuer. Paul and Robert became friends over the last decade of Robert's life and Paul became one of the few people trusted to record Robert's story.  From these stories and interviews comes Paul's first book, and one of the first books on this incredible story of the rescue of 400 Jews in the middle of Budapest, Hungary: The Yellow Star House.  The Yellow Star House can be purchased from our community partner, Queen Anne Book Company!

Thank you to our community partners on this program: Queen Anne Book Company | Honorary Consulate of Hungary in Seattle | Seattle Public Schools Library Services


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August 11, 2020 | Genocide Today: The Uyghurs in China 

With speaker Ellen Kennedy, Ph.D, World Without Genocide. The Uyghurs, a Turkic Muslim minority in western China, are being persecuted by the Chinese government with practices that governments, human rights leaders, and experts are labeling as ‘genocide.’  These actions include the use of sophisticated artificial intelligence to round up and incarcerate more than a million Uyghurs in concentration-camp-like facilities; forced sterilization of women; harvesting of body organs; mass disappearances; and the destruction of Uyghur language, culture, practice, and community. Learn about the economic and political reasons at the heart of the crisis and efforts to hold the government of China accountable for perpetrating genocide against this vulnerable Muslim minority population.

Ellen J. Kennedy, Ph.D., is the founder and Executive Director of World Without Genocide, located at Mitchell Hamline School of Law, St. Paul, MN.  The organization provides education about past and current conflicts and advocacy at local, state, and national levels for policies and legislation that promote peace and justice.  She has been an adjunct professor at Mitchell Hamline School of Law since 2011. Due to the sensitive political nature of the topic, a recording of this program is not available. Please visit World Without Genocide for more information on this topic. 

Thank you to our program community partners: Jewish Family Services | Faith Action Network   


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August 4, 2020 | Peter Metzelaar: Surviving the Holocaust in Hiding 

Peter Metzelaar, a native of the Netherlands, was just seven when his entire family was seized by the Nazis except for him and his mother, Elli.  Pete then endured the Holocaust under various harrowing circumstances -- from time in hiding on the farm of a non-Jewish couple, to going to school posing as a Christian boy, to a daring escape on a Nazi truck with his mother dressed as a Red Cross nurse.  Pete is a longtime member of the Holocaust Center for Humanity Speakers Bureau and resides in Seattle with his wife, Bea. 

 

 

 


 

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July 28, 2020 | Jim Crow Laws and Nazi Racial Policy: How the United States Influenced Hitler

With Tom White, Keene State College | As the Nazis began to coordinate and crystalize their racist program in the early 1930s, they looked for legal precedence that could help shape their own work within the German legal system. They found this precedent in U.S. legislation and initiatives, such as racist-based immigration laws and disenfranchisement of minorities. The Nazis explored ways to legitimize their racial state by studying what worked and what did not work within U.S. race-based laws and practices. Utilizing American ideas not only helped the Nazis craft the Nuremberg Laws of 1935, it also helped them cement their power.

With us today is Tom White,  Coordinator of Educational Outreach for the Cohen Center for Holocaust Studies at Keene State College in New Hampshire to talk about the influence of racist policies in the United States on Nazi Germany. He serves on the Board of Directors of the Association of Holocaust Organizations (AHO); has participated as observer and facilitator in the Global Raphael Lemkin Seminar for Genocide Prevention at the Auschwitz Institute for Peace and Reconciliation; and in 2015 was named a Peace Ambassador by the Center for Peacebuilding from Bosnia and Herzegovina. Tom was also just appointed to the New Hampshire Governor’s Commission on Holocaust and genocide education. Tom White's article, "The US and Racism" referenced in the program can be found here. Article includes bibliography of sources. Image: A Jewish woman sits on a bench marked "Only for Jews," Austria, 1938. 

Thank our community partners for this program: The Black Heritage Society, The Ray Wolpow Institute for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Crimes Against Humanity at Western Washington University, and Pacific Lutheran University.


JessicaFenton headshot 450x275.2July 21, 2020 | Jessica Fenton: Granddaughter of Polish Holocaust Survivors

Jessica Fenton grew up in South Florida very close to her grandparents, Natalie and Murray Borenstein. Jessica knew that her grandparents and their friends and neighbors were Holocaust survivors. As an adult, Jessica dug deeper to learn of her grandparents' past. She collected documents, video, and photos of her grandparents' lives and shared them with the Holocaust Center for Humanity. Jessica Fenton officially joined the Holocaust Center's Speakers Bureau in 2020 to share the stories of her grandparents and to ensure that their legacies lived on.  

 

griech pololle banner 450x275July 14, 2020 | Overlooked: People with Mental Illness and Disabilities During the Holocaust | With Dr. Beth Griech-Polelle, Pacific Lutheran University 

Among the programs the Nazi regime created was a secret project called "Aktion T-4" or the "Euthanasia Project" to rid themselves of the "unwanted" people. Not only did 70,000 adults and approximately 5,000 children die, but Hitler used these early mass killings as training for how he'd be able to efficiently and systematically commit genocide. Dr. Griech-Polelle is the Kurt Mayer Chair of Holocaust Studies at Pacific Lutheran University.  The books mentioned in this presentation are Michael Burleigh's Death and Deliverance: "Euthanasia" in Germany c. 1900-45 and James Q. Whitman's Hitler's American Model.

 

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July 7, 2020 | From Anne Frank's Amsterdam to Present-Day Seattle: An Arc Spanning Over Eighty Years | Laureen Nussbaum

Born in Germany in 1927, Laureen and her family left Nazi Germany for Amsterdam in 1936. In her new neighborhood, Laureen became friends with Margot and Anne Frank, although she was closer to Margot. After the Holocaust, Laureen remained close to Otto, Anne's father and the only surviving member of the Frank family. Laureen and her family were able to avoid deportation because they obtained paperwork claiming they were not Jewish. Laureen's book, Shedding our Stars: A Story of Hans Calmeyer and How He Saved Thousands of Families Like Mine was published in 2019. Laureen moved to the United States in 1955 and later became a professor of Foreign Languages and Literature at Portland State University. She has consulted on many scholarly works, written articles and continues to lecture on the Holocaust, Anne Frank, and her own experiences.  More about Laureen Nussbaum. 

 

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June 30, 2020 | Olympic Pride, American Prejudice with author and director, Deborah Riley Draper 

Olympic Pride, American Prejudice tells the story of 18 African Americans who defied Jim Crow and Adolf Hitler to compete in the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Deborah Riley Draper is an award-winning and critically acclaimed filmmaker, motivational speaker, and advertising agency veteran. She directed the 2016 documentary "Olympic Pride, American Prejudice" (available on Amazon Prime) and in February 2020 released her book that expands on the stories in the film. 

Set against the turbulent backdrop of a segregated United States, sixteen black men and two black women are torn between boycotting the Olympic Games in Nazi Germany or participating. If they go, they would represent a country that considered them second-class citizens and would compete amid a strong undercurrent of Aryan superiority that considered them inferior. Yet, if they stayed, would they ever have to chance to prove them wrong on a global stage? 

Thank you to our community partners for this week's program: The Northwest African American Museum | The Ray Wolpow Institute for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Crimes Against Humanity at Western Washington University | The Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle | Temple De Hirsch Sinai | Jconnect Seattle | Temple B'nai Torah | Herzl-Ner Tamid | Temple Beth Am

 

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June 23, 2020 | Barbara Adler West: Daughter of a Kindertransport Survivor

After her grandfather was arrested and imprisoned in Sachsenhausen in 1938, the family desperately looked for avenues to escape Germany. At only 9 years old, Barbara's father Steve was sent alone on the Kindertransport (children's transport) to England. Kindertransports were organized with British government sanction, giving refuge to approximately 10,000 mostly Jewish children from Nazi occupied countries.  Barbara Adler West is an attorney, a mother, and recently started a non-profit organization to help folks in need with elder law. She is also the co-author, with her father Steve, of a 2017 book about families and aging, “When I Need Your Help I’ll Let You Know.” Barbara is very proud to share her father’s story as a Legacy Speaker in the Center’s Speakers Bureau.

Thank you to our Community Partner on this program Temple Beth Am.

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June 16, 2020 | Race, Equity, and Holocaust Education

A conversation with three changemakers who are advocates of Holocaust education and who are working in Washington's school system to raise awareness of systemic racism and close the education and opportunity gap for students of color. |List of books and resources mentioned in this program

Panelists: Tanisha Brandon-Felder Ed.D, Director of Equity and Family Engagement, Shoreline School District | E-chieh Lin, Director of Diversity and Community and Director of Hiring, University Preparatory School | Angela Jones, CEO Washington STEM   

Thank you to ParentMap Live  and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Discovery Center for partnering with us on this program!

KnuteBergerCPMHeadshot 450x275June 9, 2020 | "Real Nazis of the Northwest - 1933-1941" with Knute Berger 

Nazism in the Northwest is not a new phenomenon. You’ve heard of the heroic UW rowers called “the Boys in the Boat” who beat the Nazis at the Berlin Olympics. This talk will introduce you to another group Knute Berger calls the Fascists in the Forest. We will look at the pre-World War II era in Seattle and the major players in local and West Coast fascism, focusing on representatives of the Third Reich, their propaganda efforts here, and the activities of William Dudley Pelley who headquartered his 1936 presidential campaign in Washington State in his bid to become the “American Hitler.” The talk is based on a series of stories Knute Berger wrote while researching our region’s political past for Crosscut and for his KCTS9 video series, “Mossback’s Northwest.” 

 

Nazi Propaganda 450x275June 2, 2020 | Propaganda vs. News

We are bombarded with theories, opinions, and a rapidly changing news cycle. While we have exposure to more media now than ever, we are faced with many of the same challenges of previous generations - how to evaluate and think critically about the news and media we are consuming.  What does it mean to be news-literate? John Silva, Director of Education at The News Literacy Project will share tips for being reliably informed. Holocaust Center for Humanity docents Marcy Bloom and Carl Shutoff will take a deep dive into a few examples of propaganda during the Holocaust that are part of the Holocaust Center for Humanity's collection. 

 

James Waller 450x275May 26, 2020 | "Implications of COVID-19 for Atrocity Prevention" with Dr. James Waller

While COVID-19’s impact continues on a global scale – economically, socially, politically, and existentially – it will be particularly felt in deeply divided, fragile, conflict-prone, or at-risk societies.  In such societies, it is absolutely vital that policy measures be taken for preventive action before risk escalates to the point of mass atrocity.  This presentation will review some of those pressure points related to governance, economic conditions, and social fragmentation.  The pandemic, and its potential to serve as a trigger for mass violence, makes our shared work of atrocity prevention more urgent than ever. 

Dr. James Waller is Cohen Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Keene State College (NH). He also serves as Director of Academic Programs for the Auschwitz Institute for the Prevention of Genocide and Mass Atrocities, a leading international NGO in the field.  He is the author of six books, most notably Becoming Evil: How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Atrocity (Oxford University Press, 2007). His newest book, due out later this year from Oxford University Press, is A Troubled Sleep: Risk and Resilience in Contemporary Northern Ireland.

Thank you to our community partners for this week's program: The Henry M. Jackson Foundation | The Ray Wolpow Institute for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Crimes Against Humanity at Western Washington University | Washington State University History Department | Humanities Alliance at Everett Community College | Temple B'nai Torah | Temple De Hirsch Sinai | Temple Beth Shalom | Jconnect Seattle | Moishe House Seattle

Michal w father 450x275May 19, 2020 | Michal Lotzkar: A Father's Siberian Exile

Michal Lotzkar, daughter of Polish Holocaust survivor Arieh Engelberg, who survived numerous labor camps before eventually finding refuge in Israel after the Holocaust, shares her family's story of survival, determination, and luck. Michal is a member of the Holocaust Center's Speakers Bureau. 

 

 

 

NaziHunters slide 450x275May 12, 2020 | NAZI HUNTERS with author Neal Bascomb

In 1945, at the end of World War II, Adolf Eichmann, the head of operations for the Nazis’ Final Solution, walked into the mountains of Germany and vanished from view. Sixteen years later, an elite team of spies captured him at a bus stop in Argentina and smuggled him to Israel, resulting in one of the century’s most important trials, one that cemented the Holocaust in the public imagination. Author Neal Bascomb turns his investigative research into a captivating narrative in his award-winning books Hunting Eichmann and Nazi Hunters.  Special thanks to our partner The Queen Anne Book Company for supporting this program.  

 

wilsey collection logo 450x275May 5, 2020 | Clarice Wilsey: Letters from a Dachau Liberator 

Clarice Wilsey, daughter of Army physician Captain David Wilsey, M.D. who was one of 27 doctors who entered Dachau concentration camp at liberation, shares her father's story.  Clarice is a member of the Holocaust Center's Speakers Bureau. 

 

 

 

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April 28, 2020 | Betsy Touriel-Kapner: Rescue in Bolivia

Betsy Touriel-Kapner, the daughter of Austrian Holocaust survivors, tells the stories of her parents' escape from Austria to Bolivia. Betsy is a member of the Holocaust Center's Speakers Bureau. 

 

 

 

 

Yom Hashoah 2020.4 450x275April 21, 2020 | Yom Hashoah: Holocaust Remembrance Day

Special Memorial Program with Survivor George Elbaum and introduction by Rabbi Daniel Weiner of Temple De Hirsch Sinai and Dee Simon, the Baral Family Executive Director of the Holocaust Center for Humanity.  

 

 

 

 

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April 14, 2020 | Breeze Dahlberg: A Granddaughter's Story

Granddaughter of Hungarian Auschwitz survivor Vera Frank Federman, Breeze Dahlberg shares her grandmother's story.  Breeze is a member of the Holocaust Center's Speakers Bureau. 

 

 

 

 

NaomiNewman 450x275April 7, 2020 | Naomi Newman: My Family's Resilience

The daughter of two survivors, Naomi Newman tells the stories of her parents from primary source documents and historical records. Naomi is a member is of the Holocaust Center's Speakers Bureau. 

 

 

 

 

Arik Headshot 450x275March 31, 2020 | Arik Cohen: Grandson of Four Holocaust Survivors

Arik Cohen is the grandson of four Holocaust survivors, shares their incredible stories of survival and luck. Arik is a member of the Holocaust Center's Speakers Bureau.