HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL
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Holocaust Memorial Events
What follows is a guide to public events held in association with Holocaust Memorial Week at Oregon State and in Corvallis. Aside from a few slight alterations, the events are listed as they appeared in the flyers and press releases generated at the time by our Memorial Program. We have therefore not updated information on the speakers, although in many cases developments have been considerable (for example, Christopher Browning now teaches at North Carolina, rather than Pacific Lutheran, and several of his most fundamental works, including his groundbreaking
Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, have appeared since he spoke at OSU in 1990).
Readers who themselves are involved in Holocaust commemoration activities my find it worthwhile to compare notes with our offerings through the years. It may be useful to note that some of the annual programs that follow were put together on quite limited budgets.
Events in 2008May 1, 7:30 pmTaner Akçam: The Armenian Genocide and the Reasons for Turkish Denial at Construction and Engineering Auditorium, LaSells Stewart Center
Taner Akçam
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A Turkish historian currently teaching at the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the University of Minnesota, Taner Akçam has done groundbreaking research into the campaign to destroy the Armenian minority of the Ottoman Empire in 1915-16. His numerous publications include the recent, highly acclaimed study, A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility. Akçam provides compelling evidence as regards both the scope of the genocide and the role played by the Ottoman government in planning it and carrying it through. He also deals -- and will deal during his talk on May 1 – with the reasons why the Turkish government continues to minimize the episode.
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April 30, 7:30 pmThomas Blatt: Survivor Testimony at Austin Auditorium, LaSells Stewart Center
Thomas Blatt
Thomas Blatt c.1945
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Thomas "Toivi" Blatt will discuss his experiences during World War II. Blatt endured many hardships during these years, particularly at Sobibor, an extermination camp where perhaps 250,000 Jews were gassed. But he also participated in the uprising and escape of October 1943, an event that, aside from the Warsaw Ghetto Rising of April-May 1943, is the best-known act of defiance by the Jews during the Holocaust. Blatt was one of about 300 prisoners to escape from Sobibor; only about fifty survived the war, and only seven are known still to be alive. Over the past thirty years, Blatt has become established as the main source of information on the escape and he has published two noteworthy books about it, Sobibor: The Forgotten Revolt (a history of the camp) and From the Ashes of Sobibor (a memoir, but also a study of his time in Sobibor and the escape).
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April 29, 7:00 pmThe Diary of Anne Frank at Crescent Valley H.S. Theater
Photograph of Anne Frank, dated May 1942
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This is the version of the famous play as revised by Wendy Kesselman. It is somewhat more stark than the original, which debuted in 1955, and like it has received acclaim and multiple awards since it was first produced on Broadway in 1997. The CVHS performance is produced by Albany Civic Theater and is co-sponsored by the OSU Holocaust Program. There is a modest admission charge [all events at OSU are free]. ACT will also be staging several performances of the play in Albany.
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April 28, 7:30 pmPearl Oliner: Very Religious and Irreligious Rescuers of Jews in Nazi Europe: What Was the Difference and What Difference Does It Make? at Austin Auditorium, LaSells Stewart Center
Pearl Oliner
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Pearl Oliner will speak on the mental characteristics of the altruists who rescued Jews during the Holocaust. With her husband, Sam (a Holocaust survivor), she wrote, in 1988, The Altruistic Personality, a classic in its field. She has also written several other major works on rescuers in Holocaust Europe, including Saving the Forsaken: Religious Culture and the Rescue of Jews in Nazi Europe. Pearl Oliner is the research director of the Altruistic Personality and Prosocial Behavior Institute at Humboldt State University.
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Events in 2007April 19, 7:30 pmStephanie Nyombayire: Will Darfur be Another Rwanda? at Milam Auditorium
The campaign of murder and rape that has engulfed Darfur, a region in western Sudan, since 2003, is widely regarded as the greatest human-rights crisis in the world today. The death toll is in the hundreds of thousands - 400,000 is a widely accepted estimate - and several million Darfurians have been displaced. Famine and disease are widespread.
Stephanie Nyombayire is uniquely qualified to speak of genocide. Not only has she visited Darfurian refugee camps and heard the testimony of victims, but she herself lost one hundred members of her family in the genocidal campaign in Rwanda in 1994. She often speaks on American campuses as a representative of the Genocide Intervention Network, an organization founded at Swarthmore (where Ms. Nyombayire is a student) in 2004 to combat genocide in general and the Darfurian genocide in particular.
April 18, 7:30 pmEva and Leslie Aigner: Surviving the Holocaust -- Two Testimonies at Milam Auditorium
Eva and Leslie Aigner
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Central to any Holocaust Memorial Program must be the testimony of some representative of those few who survived the genocide and are still today able to give testimony on what they saw and experienced. This year we will be fortunate to hear two stories of survival, both of them remarkable.
Les and Eva Aigner now live in the Portland area. During the war, Les Aigner endured the horrors of Auschwitz and Dachau. Eva, who during these years was a teenager living in Budapest, narrowly escaped death at the hands of Hungarian fascists. More than forty years then passed before they chose to speak publicly of their wartime experiences.
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April 18, 4:00 pmAlexander Korb: Intertwined Genocides? Violence against Serbs, Jews, and Roma in Wartime Croatia, 1941-45 at Milam Hall, room 202
More than three-quarters of the Jews who lived in Yugoslavia at the start of World War II perished in the Holocaust. The situation may have been worst of all in Croatia, where a pro-Nazi regime was maintained in power by German and Italian forces, as well as by its own paramilitary, the Ustasa. The Germans regarded the Croatians as such strong allies that they even allowed them to operate their own concentration camps. The Ustasa and the Germans murdered or deported to Auschwitz not only many Jews but Roma ("Gypsies") as well. Many thousands of Serbs were likewise killed.
Alexander Korb, a Ph.D. candidate at Humboldt University of Berlin, is currently a Charles H. Revson Fellow at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Although a young scholar, he has published extensively on German concentration camps and other Holocaust-related topics. His talk at OSU grows out of research at the USHMM. This research is ground-breaking - as will be his dissertation and the book to follow - for as matters stand the Holocaust in Croatia has not been the subject of a detailed study in English. As the title of his OSU talk suggests, Mr. Korb will deal not only with the fate of the Jews in Croatia but with that of the Roma and Serbs as well, and he will suggest a dynamic that linked the three genocidal campaigns.
April 17, 7:30 pmJon Lewis: Fateless (film) at Construction and Engineering Auditorium, LaSells Stewart Center
Released in 2005,
Fateless is based on the similarly titled novel by Imre Kertész, a Hungarian writer who (with particular reference to this work) was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2002. This film, which follows a Hungarian Jewish boy on his journey through Auschwitz and Buchenwald in 1944-45, draws on the wartime experiences of Kertész, who himself adapted his novel for the screen and made it more autobiographical.
Fateless, which is subtitled and includes dialogue in Hungarian, German, and English, has been praised by film critics for both its unrelenting realism and its distinctive cinematography, which one reviewer described as "mystically translucent."
Jon Lewis is a professor of English at OSU, with an area of concentration in Film Studies. Among his many published works on cinema are
The New American Cinema (1998) and
The End of Cinema as We Know It (2002).
April 16, 7:30 pmLawrence Baron: Recent Trends in Holocaust Cinema at Construction and Engineering Auditorium, LaSells Stewart Center
In this talk, which will be illustrated by film clips, Professor Baron will trace the major changes in the genre and themes of recent Holocaust cinema, as reflected in such films as
Europa, Europa,
Schindler's List,
Aimee and Jaguar,
Life Is Beautiful, and
The Pianist.
Lawrence Baron is the Nasatir Professor of Modern Jewish History at San Diego State University. A noted speaker and author, Professor Baron has made significant contributions to several areas of study that relate to the Holocaust, including altruism. His talk at OSU will draw on his latest book,
Projecting the Holocaust into the Present: The Changing Focus of Contemporary Holocaust Cinema (Rowman & Littlefield, 2005).
April 16, 4:00 pmLawrence Baron: Not in Kansas Anymore: Holocaust Movies for Children at Milam Hall, room 206
As the Holocaust increasingly has been incorporated into public education, feature films, often based on fiction that is intended for young readers, are being made. Professor Baron will review this trend, starting with Disney's
The Devil in Vienna and proceeding through Dustin Hoffman's production of
The Devil's Arithmetic. While of interest to a broad audience, this event should have a particular appeal to those who teach, or may one day teach, Holocaust-related topics in the schools.
Events in 2006April 27, 7:30 pmDaniel Asa Rose: Humility and Chutzpah - The Making of a Holocaust Memoir at Construction and Engineering Auditorium, LaSells Stewart Center
In 2000, Daniel Asa Rose published
Hiding Places: A Father and His Sons Retrace Their Family's Escape from the Holocaust. In this highly innovative contribution to Holocaust literature, Rose recounted a trip that he had taken with two young sons, to retrace the route that a cousin had taken during World War II to escape Nazi-occupied Europe (the cousin did in fact escape, but his twin daughters were killed). As recounted in
Hiding Places, Rose's journey addressed not only a harsh episode of family history but also his relationship with his sons the issue of his own identity. In his appearance at OSU, Rose will discuss the making of
Hiding Places.
Daniel Asa Rose has had a varied career in the arts, as well as a successful one. An award-winning actor in his 20's, he left the stage and turned to writing fiction. His first book, a collection of short stories entitled
Small Family with Rooster, was highly acclaimed , as was a subsequent novel,
Flipping For It. A National Endowment for the Arts Literary Fellow for 2006, he is also well known as a book reviewer. He is the editor of
The Reading Room, an international literary magazine, and his reviews regularly appear in The
New York Observer and
New York Magazine. He often contributes columns to
Esquire,
GQ, and the
New York Times Magazine.
April 26, 7:30 pmJack Terry: To Live Again -- Memories of Destruction and Renewal at Austin Auditorium, LaSells Stewart Center
As a child, Jack Terry, then known as Jakub Szabmacher, experienced the Holocaust in its full fury. He lost his parents, siblings, relatives, and friends. In the camps of Budzyn and Wieliczka, in his native Poland, and Flossenbürg, in Bavaria, he regularly witnessed officers kill prisoners on a whim, and he himself narrowly escaped death on several occasions. But he also saw the other side of humanity, and the support and protection of fellow prisoners was a major reason why he was able to survive. After the war, he came to America. He now lives in New York City, where he is a practicing psychoanalyst, and many of his patients are, like himself, Holocaust survivors.
In 2005, Dr. Terry's memoir was published as
Jakub's World: A Boy's Story of Loss and Survival in the Holocaust. Co-authored by Alicia Nitecki, whose grandfather was also interned at Flossenbürg,
Jakub's World stands as one of the outstanding works of Holocaust survivor literature to have appeared in recent years. The noted Holocaust scholar Lawrence Langer has written of it, "This volume has considerable historical as well as literary merit. By resisting the temptation to turn their story into a struggle between heroes and villains, the coauthors of
Jakub's World create a much more honest report of one boy's painful fight to survive, leaving to the reader the challenging task of grasping how he managed to do so."
April 25, 7:30 pmLaurel Leff: Buried by The Times -- The Holocaust and America's Most Important Newspaper at Construction and Engineering Auditorium, LaSells Stewart Center
Almost as soon as mass killing of the Jews began in mid-1941, reports of massacres began to spread in the west. Within a year, various sources were providing allied governments and the media with strong evidence and eyewitness testimony detailing the killing campaign and the death camps. But while the genocide continued and even after the defeat of Germany brought this campaign to a close, the Holocaust was consistently under-reported in the western media. The tendency to ignore or minimize the evidence that a campaign of genocide was underway extended even to the New York Times, the most prominent and influential newspaper in the United States.
In her talk, Laurel Leff will discuss why the Times devoted so little coverage to reports that the Jews of Europe were being systematically annihilated. Professor Leff teaches journalism at Northeastern University. She is the author of
Buried by The Times -- The Holocaust and America's Most Important Newspaper (Cambridge, 2005). Of this work, David S. Wyman, the preeminent historian of American policy regarding European Jewry during World War II, has written, "This is the best book yet about American media coverage of the Holocaust, as well as an extremely important contribution to our understanding of America's response to the mass murder of the Jews."
April 24, 7:30 pmJames E. Waller: Never Again? Peacekeeping and Peacebuilding in a Genocidal World at Construction and Engineering Auditorium, LaSells Stewart Center
As in past years, the program for Holocaust Memorial Week at OSU will deal not only with the Holocaust itself but with the general issue of genocide and mass murder. The twentieth century, far more than any that preceded it, was studded with genocidal campaigns, and the new century has already witnessed extensive violence prompted by ethnic, national, and religious hatred. In his talk at OSU, James E. Waller will analyze the causes of genocide and suggest measures that help to reduce the bloodshed, as well as lead to the reconstruction of post-genocidal societies.
Professor Waller chairs the Psychology Department at Whitworth College in Spokane and also holds the Lindaman Chair in psychology at Whitworth. He is the author of the highly acclaimed
Becoming Evil: How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Killing (Oxford, 2002) and has also published two books on race relations and racism in America. He is currently involved in preparing a new edition of
Becoming Evil and is working on a second book on genocide.
The appearance by Professor Waller is sponsored in part by OSU Convocations and Lectures.
April 21, 7:30 pmJust One More Dance (Play directed by Scott Palmer) at Corvallis High School Theater
Just One More Dance, a one-act play, is adapted from a memoir of the same name written by Ernst Levy, a Czech Jew who survived Auschwitz and has lived in Scotland since 1962.
Just One More Dance was first produced in Glasgow in 2002 and it has been staged elsewhere in Britain since, being very highly acclaimed there. The production at Corvallis High School will mark its debut in the U.S.
Just One More Dance is an ideal play to stage for the benefit of a high school audience or for young people whose knowledge of the Holocaust may be limited. It is simple and straightforward, following the story of Ernst Levy from 1938 through his liberation from the camps. At the close of each performance at CHS, cast members will field questions and observations from the audience regarding the Holocaust.
Scott Palmer, who is directing the play, is a member of the theater program at OSU. Until recently, Scott directed a Scottish theater company, and it was in Scotland that he saw a production of
Just One More Dance.
Note: There is a $10.00 admission charge for all adults who attend
Just One More Dance; admission for children under 12 and for seniors is $5.00. Tickets can be reserved by calling the OSU Theatre Box Office (541-737-2784) or by e-mailing
JOMD@comcast.net. Specials rates are available for block orders. Most middle- and high-school students in School District 509J will have an opportunity to attend the play admission free, in daytime performances that are not open to the general public. No admission is charged for any of the other events noted in this news release.
For more information, please phone 541-737-2784 or e-mail
JOMD@comcast.net.
April 20, 7:30 pmJust One More Dance (Play directed by Scott Palmer) at Corvallis High School Theater
Just One More Dance, a one-act play, is adapted from a memoir of the same name written by Ernst Levy, a Czech Jew who survived Auschwitz and has lived in Scotland since 1962.
Just One More Dance was first produced in Glasgow in 2002 and it has been staged elsewhere in Britain since, being very highly acclaimed there. The production at Corvallis High School will mark its debut in the U.S.
Just One More Dance is an ideal play to stage for the benefit of a high school audience or for young people whose knowledge of the Holocaust may be limited. It is simple and straightforward, following the story of Ernst Levy from 1938 through his liberation from the camps. At the close of each performance at CHS, cast members will field questions and observations from the audience regarding the Holocaust.
Scott Palmer, who is directing the play, is a member of the theater program at OSU. Until recently, Scott directed a Scottish theater company, and it was in Scotland that he saw a production of
Just One More Dance.
Note: There is a $10.00 admission charge for all adults who attend
Just One More Dance; admission for children under 12 and for seniors is $5.00. Tickets can be reserved by calling the OSU Theatre Box Office (541-737-2784) or by e-mailing
JOMD@comcast.net. Specials rates are available for block orders. Most middle- and high-school students in School District 509J will have an opportunity to attend the play admission free, in daytime performances that are not open to the general public. No admission is charged for any of the other events noted in this news release.
For more information, please phone 541-737-2784 or e-mail
JOMD@comcast.net.
April 19, 7:30 pmJust One More Dance (Play directed by Scott Palmer) at Corvallis High School Theater
Just One More Dance, a one-act play, is adapted from a memoir of the same name written by Ernst Levy, a Czech Jew who survived Auschwitz and has lived in Scotland since 1962.
Just One More Dance was first produced in Glasgow in 2002 and it has been staged elsewhere in Britain since, being very highly acclaimed there. The production at Corvallis High School will mark its debut in the U.S.
Just One More Dance is an ideal play to stage for the benefit of a high school audience or for young people whose knowledge of the Holocaust may be limited. It is simple and straightforward, following the story of Ernst Levy from 1938 through his liberation from the camps. At the close of each performance at CHS, cast members will field questions and observations from the audience regarding the Holocaust.
Scott Palmer, who is directing the play, is a member of the theater program at OSU. Until recently, Scott directed a Scottish theater company, and it was in Scotland that he saw a production of
Just One More Dance.
Note: There is a $10.00 admission charge for all adults who attend
Just One More Dance; admission for children under 12 and for seniors is $5.00. Tickets can be reserved by calling the OSU Theatre Box Office (541-737-2784) or by e-mailing
JOMD@comcast.net. Specials rates are available for block orders. Most middle- and high-school students in School District 509J will have an opportunity to attend the play admission free, in daytime performances that are not open to the general public. No admission is charged for any of the other events noted in this news release.
For more information, please phone 541-737-2784 or e-mail
JOMD@comcast.net.
April 18, 7:30 pmJust One More Dance (Play directed by Scott Palmer) at Corvallis High School Theater
Just One More Dance, a one-act play, is adapted from a memoir of the same name written by Ernst Levy, a Czech Jew who survived Auschwitz and has lived in Scotland since 1962.
Just One More Dance was first produced in Glasgow in 2002 and it has been staged elsewhere in Britain since, being very highly acclaimed there. The production at Corvallis High School will mark its debut in the U.S.
Just One More Dance is an ideal play to stage for the benefit of a high school audience or for young people whose knowledge of the Holocaust may be limited. It is simple and straightforward, following the story of Ernst Levy from 1938 through his liberation from the camps. At the close of each performance at CHS, cast members will field questions and observations from the audience regarding the Holocaust.
Scott Palmer, who is directing the play, is a member of the theater program at OSU. Until recently, Scott directed a Scottish theater company, and it was in Scotland that he saw a production of
Just One More Dance.
Note: There is a $10.00 admission charge for all adults who attend
Just One More Dance; admission for children under 12 and for seniors is $5.00. Tickets can be reserved by calling the OSU Theatre Box Office (541-737-2784) or by e-mailing
JOMD@comcast.net. Specials rates are available for block orders. Most middle- and high-school students in School District 509J will have an opportunity to attend the play admission free, in daytime performances that are not open to the general public. No admission is charged for any of the other events noted in this news release.
For more information, please phone 541-737-2784 or e-mail
JOMD@comcast.net.
Events in 2005May 5, 7:30 pmRichard D. Breitman: Himmler - Architect of the Holocaust at Austin Auditorium, LaSells Stewart Center
While the "Final Solution" - the destruction of European Jewry - was effected in the name of Hitler, its overall management was primarily in the hands of Heinrich Himmler, head of the S.S. More than just a manager, however, Himmler was an ideologue who set the tone for the S.S., an organization that he committed to eliminating all of those that he regarded as a danger to Germany and to the Aryan race that he glorified.
As author of
The Architect of Genocide: Himmler and The Final Solution, Richard Breitman is particularly well qualified to discuss Himmler's motivation and his role in the Holocaust. Breitman, a Professor of History at American University, has published highly acclaimed works on several Holocaust-related topics, including
German Socialism and Weimar Democracy;
Breaking the Silence: American Refugee Policy and European Jewry, 1933-1945 (with Alan Kraut); and
Official Secrets: What the Nazis Planned, What the British and Americans Knew. He works with the U.S. Holocaust Museum as editor-in-chief of
Holocaust and Genocide Studies and is currently Director of Historical Research for the Nazi War Criminal Records Interagency Working Group, a federal government agency.
May 4, 7:30 pmPanel: Refugees, East and West at Construction and Engineering Auditorium, LaSells Stewart Center
During the mid- and late 1930's, as well as throughout the war, Jews fled Nazi-occupied Europe in all directions. Most did not survive, being instead swept up into the Holocaust. But many did find refuge. This event will focus on two stories about escape.
Participants:
Ursula Bacon was a wartime resident of the Shanghai ghetto, which at its peak was occupied by 20,000-25,000 European Jews. Although temporarily safe from the Nazis, these Jews were surrounded by another fierce conflict, for they were much oppressed by the Japanese occupiers. Ms. Bacon recently published
Shanghai Diary, a memoir of her experiences in the ghetto. During her talk, she will discuss life in the Shanghai ghetto. Afterwards, she will be available to sign copies of her book.
Aristides de Sousa Mendes |
Sebastian Mendes is on the faculty of the Department of Art at Western Washington University. His talk at OSU will deal with his grandfather, Aristides de Sousa Mendes. During the war, de Sousa Mendes was a Portuguese diplomat serving in Vichy France. Defying the orders of his government, he issued 30,000 visas that enabled Jewish refugees to escape to Spain and Portugal. The Portuguese government dismissed him from his post and deprived him of his pension. Like many other rescuers, he died in poverty. In 1993, Yad Vashem, the Holocaust museum in Jerusalem, honored him as one of the "Righteous of the Nations." He is the only Portuguese to be so recognized.
May 3, 7:00 pmSymposium: The Jewish Body and Anti-Semitic Stereotypes at Powell Conference Center, OSU Memorial Union
Our second evening program will focus on the relationship between myths and stereotypes regarding the Jewish body and how they both fitted into and few the broader phenomenon of Jew-hatred.
Participants:
John Efron (Berkeley)
Relevant publications:
Defenders of the Race: Jewish Doctors and Race Science in Fin-de-Siecle Europe (1994);
Medicine and the German Jews (2001); co-editor,
Jewish History and Jewish Memory (1998)
Topic: "Jewish Doctors in Pre-Nazi Germany"
John Hoberman (University of Texas)
Relevant publications:
Sport and Political Ideology (1984);
The Olympic Crisis (1986);
Mortal Engines: The Science of Performance and the Dehumanization of Sport (1992)
Topic: "The Jewish Body in Pain"
Neil Davison (Oregon State University)
Relevant publication:
James Joyce, Ulysses, and the Construction of Jewish Identity (1996)
Topic: "The Jewish Homme/Femme-Fatale: (Art)ifice, Race, and DuMaurier's TRILBY"
Paul Kopperman (Oregon State University)
Relevant publication:
Ashes and Smoke: The Holocaust in Its History (2003)
Topic: "The Effeminization of the Jewish Male: A Convergence of Myth and Stereotype"
May 2, 7:30 pmLynne Viola: The Other Archipelago: Stalin’s War Against the Peasantry at Withycombe Auditorium
Each year, one day of Holocaust Memorial Week at OSU is set aside to focus on an episode of genocide or mass murder other than the Holocaust. In 2005, this program will deal with the extirpation of the Russian peasant class known as the kulaks.
In his classic work, The Gulag Archipelago, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote of the vast network of concentration camps that Stalin built to house "enemies of the people." These were institutions of slave labor and isolation where millions of people died. Yet there was another archipelago of the gulag, a peasant archipelago, that developed in tandem with the concentration camps. This archipelago existed beyond the gaze of foreign observers and long remained hidden from historians. Even Solzhenitsyn could only hint at its existence. But it was vast, stretching across the enormity of the Soviet Union's empty hinterlands. This archipelago of the gulag was an internal diaspora of peasant families, the so-called kulaks, who were "liquidated as a class" in the early 1930s during Stalin's forced collectivization of agriculture. Those who were not killed outright were forcibly uprooted from their homes and villages and deposited in the desolate open spaces of the far north, the Urals, Siberia, the far east, and Kazakhstan. In 1930 and 1931, the highpoint of the peasant deportations, the Soviet regime sent close to two million people into internal exile, accounting for the largest contingent of prisoners in the Soviet Union through the mid-1930s and the single largest deportation of the entire Soviet era.
Lynne Viola (Professor of History, University of Toronto) specializes in 20th-century Russian political and social history. Her research interests include women, peasants, political culture, and Stalinist terror. She is the author of some thirty articles and two books
The Best Sons of the Fatherland: Workers in the Vanguard of Soviet Collectivization (1987) and
Peasant Rebels Under Stalin: Collectivization and the Culture of Peasant Resistance (1996) - and has edited eight other works, including collections of documents that make a fundamental difference in how the early Stalinist period is understood. A member of the University of Toronto based Stalin Era Research and Archive Project, she is currently working on a book about the deportation of peasants in Stalinist Russia.
April 25, 7:30 pmSgt. Don Malarkey: Freedom is not Free at LaSells Stewart Center
Don Malarkey, World War II veteran and inspiration for Stephan Ambrose's Band of Brothers will deliver his lecture, "Freedom is not Free" on Monday, April 25 at 7:00 PM at the LaSells Steward Center on the Oregon State University Campus. The lecture is free and open to the public.
During World War II, Don Malarkey was a sergeant in Easy Company and participated in a number of major operations and engagements as Allied forces moved toward victory against the Nazi's, including D-Day, Operation Market Garden, and Bastogne. Toward the close of the war, he assisted in the liberation of Berchtesgaden and Zell am See. Now a resident of Salem, he was a major resource, and inspiration for a character by the same name, for Stephen Ambrose as he wrote Band of Brothers.
The opportunity for young people to learn from, and to be inspired by, people of Sergeant Malarkey's caliber is diminishing daily. Malarkey has considerable experience as a speaker, and his visit to campus will include an evening lecture, photo opportunities, and a raffled door prize of the HBO miniseries, The Band of Brother, to be donated by Fred Meyers in Corvallis.
This lecture will kick off the 2005 Holocaust Memorial Week, which will take place May 2nd through May 5th. Sergeant Malarkey helped to liberate several concentration camps while serving in the European theatre, and his memories are precious - representing one of the last remaining first hand testimonies of camp liberation. Students, faculty and community members will greatly benefit from Sergeant Malarkey's very important memories, which will raise awareness about the 60th anniversary of the end of the war, as well as the upcoming Holocaust Memorial Week.
April 14, 4:00 pmDr. Eric Ehrenreich: Racial Scientific Ideology and Motivations for the Holocaust at Powell Leadership Center, OSU Memorial Union
The Nazis claimed that their racial policies were based on cutting edge science. Even before the Nazi assumption of power, many of the most prominent German natural scientists endorsed the racist claims that the Nazis later institutionalized as state ideology. Indeed, few individuals or institutions in Germany questioned the validity of racial "science." The widespread acceptance of ideas that would later be shown to be demonstrably false ideas was based on perceptions of benefits associated with these ideas.
Dr. Ehrenreich maintains that the Final Solution was in seeming disjunction with this historical development, as the destruction of the Jews would appear to have been objectively detrimental to the interests of the Nazi leadership. Rather, as he will maintain during his talk at OSU, the primary benefit to the Nazis may have been psychological, rather than practical.
Eric Ehrenreich is currently a Douglas and Carol Cohen Family Scholar at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's Center for Advanced Historical Studies. He is revising for publication his doctoral thesis, "Genealogy and Genocide: The Nazi 'Proof of Ancestry' and the Holocaust."
Sponsored by United State Holocaust Memorial Museum, Center for Advanced Historical Studies and OSU Holocaust Memorial Program
Events in 2004April 22, 7:00 pmProgram on the massacres in Cambodia, 1975-1979 at Gilfillan Auditorium (Wilkinson Hall)
During the regime of Pol Pot, more than one million Cambodians were slain by the Khmer Rouge. This event will provide audiences with some sense of the horror of that time. It will be introduced by a panel of OSU students from Cambodia who will share their stories or those of their families. Their reminiscences will be followed by the screening of
The Killing Fields, the 1984 classic that was nominated for seven Academy Awards and won three.
The Killing Fields focuses on the true story of an American reporter, played by Sam Waterston, and his Cambodian interpreter, played by Haing S. Ngor (Academy Award, Best Supporting Actor). More broadly, the film deals graphically with the murderous rampage that swept away perhaps one-fifth, perhaps more, of the entire population of Cambodia.
April 21, 7:30 pmFalicja (Concert) at First Methodist Church of Corvallis
Jack Falk, who lives in Portland and hosts a weekly radio program on Yiddish music, will perform a group of musical selections and poems that recall the ghettoes and camps of the Holocaust period. Audience members will receive programs that will include all songs and poems in translation.
The musical program will include selections from the Terezin (Theresienstadt) concentration camp; works by the well-known folk poet Mordecai Gebirtig, who was martyred in the Krakow ghetto; compositions that were created and performed in the Lodz ghetto; and other pieces taken from Shmerke Kaczerginski's seminal work,
Lider fun di getos un lagern ("Songs of the ghettos and concentration camps"), a compilation that Kaczerginski (himself a survivor of the Vilna ghetto) published soon after the war. The music will also draw from the rich Chassidic tradition, which emphasizes song as the consummate vehicle for casting off melancholy and for finding the strength to persevere through times of great peril.
This program will likewise feature the Yiddish poetry of Yankev Glatshteyn, Avrohom Sutzkever, and others who wrote in the years immediately following the Shoah. Finally, the program will include comments by Andrew Ehrlich, concertmaster of the Portland Chamber Orchestra. Both parents of Mr. Ehrlich, who will be accompanying Jack Falk on violin, were survivors of the Holocaust. During the course of the evening he will speak briefly about his parents and his own experiences growing up as a child of survivors. Throughout the event, songs and music will be accompanied by the videotaped comments of Mr. Ehrlich's mother, Falicja, whose name provided the title for this event.
April 20, 5:42 pmWilliam L. Brustein: Prelude to Holocaust: Jew - Hatred in Interwar Europe at Construction and Engineering Auditorium, LaSells Stewart Center
Among Holocaust scholars in mid-career, William Brustein is one of the most accomplished. What sets him apart from Holocaust authorities in general is his interdisciplinary approach. Director of the University Center for International Studies at the University of Pittsburgh, he is also a professor of History, Political Science, and Sociology. During the past decade he has concentrated on the subject of Antisemitism among Nazi Party members on the grassroots level and has built out from this to review the same issue among the social rank-and-file in other European nations in the interwar period. His project has so far resulted in two books, both of them important, innovative, and influential:
The Logic of Evil: The Social Origins of the Nazi Party, 1925-1933 and
Roots of Hate: Anti-Semitism in Europe Before the Holocaust.
When he speaks at Oregon State, Professor Brustein will discuss the primary conclusions that he has drawn from his research on interwar popular Antisemitism. Beyond that, he will deal not only with the subject of Antisemitism in interwar Europe, but with a rise in this prejudice over the past decade, and he will analyze the reasons for the trend in both periods. His talk should be of interest not only in examining Antisemitism per se, but the broader issue of why individuals and groups are drawn to prejudice.
April 19, 7:30 pmWalter Plywaski: A Survivor’s Story at Austin Auditorium, LaSells Stewart Center
In 1954, Walter Plywaski enrolled at Oregon State College (later, OSU). He had varied interests, and for a time he studied English literature under Bernard Malamud, before finally majoring in electrical engineering and graduating in that field in 1957. But his background was very different from that of his classmates. Born Wladyslaw Plywacki in Lodz, Poland, in 1929, he and his family were forced into the ghetto there when it was established ten years later. In 1944, the family was transported via freight car to Auschwitz-Birkenau, and Walter last saw his mother when she was forced into a line that led to the gas chamber. He later witnessed the fatal beating of his father at the hands of a camp commandant. Against great odds, he and a stepbrother - who would later precede him to Oregon State - were able to remain together in a series of camps, finally making their escape from Dachau.
Walter Plywaski's appearance promises to be a very special evening, as well as a homecoming.
Events in 2003May 1, 7:30 pmA World Without Bodies (Film and talk) at Construction and Engineering Auditorium, LaSells Stewart Center
Paul Kopperman, professor of history at OSU, will discuss the eugenics/euthanasia program in Nazi Germany, which cost the lives of about 240,000 mentally or physically disabled people. This event will include the presentation of a documentary,
A World Without Bodies, which deals with the campaign against the disabled.
April 30, 7:30 pmChella Kryszak: A Survivor’s Story at Construction and Engineering Auditorium, LaSells Stewart Center
During the Second World War, Mrs. Kryszak, a Dutch Jew, endured eight concentration/death camps, including Auschwitz, and a death march. She is well known as a witness and speaker. Her talk will be preceded by a vigil, beginning at 6:30 p.m., in the courtyard of the LaSells Stewart Center.
This event is sponsored by OSU Hillel.
April 29, 7:00 pmSymposium: Homosexuality, Nazis, and the Holocaust at Construction and Engineering Auditorium, LaSells Stewart Center
Participants:
Harry Oosterhuis (University of Maastricht),
Male Bonding and Homosexuality in Nazi Germany. Professor Oosterhuis is the author of
Homosexuality and Male Bonding in Pre-Nazi Germany;
Gay Men and the Sexual History of the Political Left; and
Stepchildren of Nature: Krafft-Ebing, Psychiatry, and the Making of Sexual Identity.
Mark Meyers (University of King's College, Halifax),
The Nazi as Homosexual/The Homosexual as Nazi: Historicizing a Persistent Cultural Fantasy. Dr. Meyers' interests include postmodernism and the shaping of identity in European societies.
Jim Steakley (University of Wisconsin),
Comparative Victimhood: The Holocaust and/versus the Homocaust. Among Professor Steakley's publications is his highly acclaimed monograph,
The Homosexual Emancipation Movement in Germany.
Geoffrey Giles (University of Florida) will serve as moderator. Professor Giles, author of
Students and National Socialism in Germany, has worked extensively on the theme of popular culture and identity in Europe.
This event is sponsored by the Thomas Hart and Mary Jones Horning Endowment in the Humanities.
April 28, 7:30 pmNechama Tec: Gender Differences in Holocaust Experience at Construction and Engineering Auditorium, LaSells Stewart Center
Nechama Tec, a professor at the University of Connecticut at Stamford, has published six books on the Holocaust, including the classic
When Light Pierced the Darkness: Christian Rescue of Jews in Nazi-Occupied Poland. A survivor herself, she has recounted her own wartime experiences in
Dry Tears: The Story of a Lost Childhood. Her talk at OSU draws on her latest book,
Resilience and Courage: Women, Men, and the Holocaust.
Professor Tec's appearance is co-sponsored by OSU Convocations and Lectures.
Events in 2002April 16, 7:30 pmRichard G. Hovannisian: The Armenian Genocide as a Prototype at Construction and Engineering Auditorium, LaSells Stewart Center
Holocaust Memorial observances will conclude with a program on the Armenian Massacres of 1915-16. There will be films and exhibits on the massacres during the day of April 16. Richard G. Hovannisian, the speaker that evening, is Professor of Armenian and Near Eastern History at UCLA. Well known for his multi-volume study,
The Republic of Armenia, Professor Hovannisian is likewise among the preeminent historians of the massacres, and he has edited and contributed to three major works in the field:
The Armenian Genocide in Perspective;
The Armenian Genocide: History, Politics, Ethics; and
Remembrance and Denial: The Case of the Armenian Genocide. He also has a great interest in the issue of comparative genocide and during his talk at OSU he will discuss parallels between the Armenian Massacres, the Holocaust, and other episodes of mass murder in the twentieth century.
April 15, 7:30 pmPanel: Reflections on Terezin at Construction and Engineering Auditorium, LaSells Stewart Center
The notorious "model settlement" that the Nazis operated at Terezin (Theresienstadt) 1941-45 in an attempt to show that they were treating Jews humanely was in fact a way station, and most of the inmates who did not die there were sent on to the extermination camps. Only about 15% survived the war. Nevertheless, here as in other ghettos the Jews maintained an active cultural and educational program. During the four years that the ghetto functioned, more than 2300 public lectures were given - by professors, rabbis, physicians, and others who sought to contribute to the intellectual vitality of the inmates. Meanwhile, the cultural life of the ghetto was highlighted by an active musical program. Of particular meaning to the inmates was Verdi's Requiem, which was performed sixteen times and was interpreted as a show of defiance. At the last performance, Adolf Eichmann was in attendance, unaware of the symbolism in the concert.
This program will begin with a virtual tour of Terezin provided by Petra Penickova, a guide at the camp memorial. Paul Kopperman (Professor of History, OSU) will speak on
The Terezin Lectures and the Theme of Jewish Resistance. Concluding the program, a panel will discuss Jewish efforts to maintain their culture in the ghetto at Terezin. Among the participants in that panel will be Edgar Krasa, a survivor of the ghetto and a member of the chorus at all sixteen performances of the
Requiem.
This program is sponsored by the Oregon Symphony
April 11, 7:30 pmPanel: A New Beginning? at Construction and Engineering Auditorium, LaSells Stewart Center
Representatives of several Christian denominations will discuss what their respective churches have done in recent years to combat Antisemitism. Participants will include: Rev. Timothy Stover, United Campus Ministry; Professor Chris Anderson, a deacon at St. Mary’s; and Tom Sherry, of the LDS Institute of Religion, will also moderate.
April 10, 7:30 pmSibylle Niemoller von Sell: Confronting Evil at Austin Auditorium, LaSells Stewart Center
Sibylle Niemoller – actress, writer, and renowned speaker -- will discuss the career of her late husband, Martin Niemoller, a primary figure in the Confessing Church during the 1930's. Pastor Niemoller was interned 1937-1945, mainly at Sachsenhausen and Dachau, and indeed today he is primarily remembered outside Germany for a statement that he made after the war: “They came for the Communists, and I didn't object – For I wasn't a Communist; They came for the Socialists, and I didn’t object – For I wasn’t a Socialist; They came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t object – For I wasn’t a trade unionist; They came for the Jews, and I didn’t object – For I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for me – And there was no one left to object.” Nevertheless, Martin Niemoller and other ministers in the Confessing Church did in fact stand up to the Nazis on many issues during the 1930's, protesting particularly their efforts to reconstruct Christianity along lines that reflected their ideology. Besides reflecting on her husband’s career, Mrs. Niemoller will speak of her own wartime experiences, notably her participation in an underground group that attempted to rescue Jews in Germany.
April 9, 7:30 pmDoris L. Bergen: Twisted Cross: Were the Nazis Christians? at Construction and Engineering Auditorium, LaSells Stewart Center
Doris L. Bergen, a member of the history faculty at Notre Dame, is the author of a highly acclaimed book,
Twisted Cross: The German Christian Movement in the Third Reich. She has done extensive work on Holocaust-related issues and is a member of the board at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. In her talk at OSU, Dr. Bergen will consider three perspectives -- statistical, ideological, and institutional -- as she examines the issue of whether the Nazis were Christians. Her talk is intended to encourage the audience to reconsider the roots and the lessons of the Holocaust.
Doris L. Bergen’s appearance is sponsored by OSU Convocations and Lectures.
April 9, 12:00 pmItka Zygmuntowicz: A Survivor’s Story at Snell Forum (MU East)
Mrs. Zygmuntowicz, a survivor of Auschwitz, will discuss her wartime experiences. A number of photos of concentration camps will be on exhibit in the Snell Forum, and Rachel Becker, an OSU student, will read a letter written in April 1945 by an American soldier who, having participated in the liberation of Buchenwald, reported his impressions.
April 8, 8:00 pmAngel: A Nightmare in Two Acts (Play by Jo Davidsmeyer) at Snell Forum (MU East)
Angel, which is based on an actual case, depicts the postwar trial of a former SS Camp Guard, Irma Grese, whose angelic beauty contrasts with her violent nature. While in prison awaiting her execution, Grese, who is cynical as well as sadistic, attacks the complacent sense of justice of the British officer who had prosecuted her. Josef Mengele, whom Grese had assisted both in carrying out his experiments and in making selections, appears in nightmare visions to support her in her attack. This thought-provoking play on the nature of evil will be performed as reader’s theater.
April 8, 7:00 pmHolocaust vigil for the OSU campus community at Front steps, OSU Memorial Union
Speakers will include Helen Berg, the mayor of Corvallis, and Danette Gillespie, Head of the OSU Diversity Committee.
April 7, 7:30 pmLawrence Baron: Christianities of Complicity and of Compassion at Withycombe Auditorium
During the Holocaust, many European Christians, stirred by a tradition of Jew-hatred, cooperated in the extermination of the Jews. Others, however, were moved by a religious sense to protect their Jewish neighbors. Lawrence Baron (Professor of Jewish History, San Diego State) has authored or co-authored four books and many articles, including
Embracing the Other: Philosophical, Psychological, and Historical Perspectives on Altruism. His talk at OSU will focus on the issue of how the religious sense of strongly identifying European Christians was reflected in the stances that they took in relation to the Holocaust.
Events in 2001April 24, 7:30 pmJohn R. Braun: Ethnic Cleansing in the Former Yugoslavia: The Historical Background at Construction and Engineering Auditorium, LaSells Stewart Center
Why did “ethnic cleansing” return to Yugoslavia in the 1990's? John R. Braun, who teaches history at OSU, will discuss this issue in terms of the history of the region: the Ottoman background, the Balkan and World Wars, the failure to create a stable multi-ethnic state, and the rise of nationalism during the 1980's.
April 24, 3:30 pmPretty Village, Pretty Flame (Film) at Killer Hall, Room 350
Pretty Village, Pretty Flame (in Serbian, with English subtitles) is a highly acclaimed film that was produced in 1997. It is the story of a Bosnian Muslim and a Serb who had been boyhood friends but find themselves in combat during the civil war of the 1990's.
April 19, 7:30 pmAl Wiener: A Survivor’s Story at Construction and Engineering Auditorium, LaSells Stewart Center
At the core of our annual program is the testimony of an individual who personally witnessed the horror that was the Holocaust. The speaker this year, Al Wiener, was born in Poland. As a young boy, he had to identify the body of his father, shot by the Germans. He later endured five camps. Yet, he also saw some good, such as the German woman who helped to keep him alive by smuggling food to him. What he saw and experienced during the Holocaust will be the subject of his talk at OSU.
April 18, 7:30 pmMark Largent: Eugenic Sterilization in Oregon, 1909-1983 at Construction and Engineering Auditorium, LaSells Stewart Center
During the early decades of the 20th century, the eugenics movement swept Europe and the U.S. eugenicists aimed at improving national or racial stock by eliminating “undesirable” elements. A radical form of this perspective encouraged the Nazi effort to eliminate European Jewry. The American version of eugenics was not so extreme, but it was politically potent at a time when many scientists and intellectuals believed that human social qualities were biologically based. In 1917, the Oregon Assembly enacted a law enabling forced sterilization of “persons with inferior hereditary potentialities.” In his lecture, Mark Largent, an assistant professor in the OSU Dept. of History, will discuss the eugenics movement in Oregon in terms of the sterilization campaign, and relate it to the movement on a national and international scale. Dr. Largent is well known for his scholarship on the history of American eugenics, and in recent months has begun to research previously untapped resources on eugenics in Oregon.
April 17, 7:30 pmThomas Brand: International Law, Crimes against Humanity, and the Lessons of Nuremberg at Construction and Engineering Auditorium, LaSells Stewart Center
Colonel (ret.) Thomas Brand, who served for many years in the Judge Advocate General Corps, is the son of James T. Brand, a justice of the Oregon Supreme Court and the judge who oversaw the trials at Nuremberg that focused on crimes against humanity. Judge Brand was the model for Spencer Tracy's character in the film classic,
Judgment at Nuremberg. In his talk at OSU, Thomas Brand will review the history and progress of International Criminal Law. Drawing on both his own expertise in International Law and his father's observations, he will comment on the concept of "Crimes against Humanity" as it was applied at Nuremberg.
April 16, 7:30 pmMichael Allen: Modernity, the Holocaust, and Machines without History at Construction and Engineering Auditorium, LaSells Stewart Center
Dr. Allen is an assistant professor of history at Georgia Tech. Among the most accomplished young scholars in the field of Holocaust Studies, his many honors include a fellowship at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. In his talk, which anticipates findings and observations that will be included in a forthcoming book, he will address the issue of how the Nazis’ concept of “modernity” helped to precipitate the Holocaust.
April 15, 7:30 pmCandlelight Vigil at Memorial Union Quad
Speakers will include: Helen Berg, mayor of Corvallis, and Cantor Lyle Rockler.
Events in 2000May 6, 7:30 pmKindertransport (Play by Diane Samuels) at OSU Lab Theater, Withycombe Hall
This play focuses on Evelyn, born Eva, a woman who, in 1938, had joined thousands of other Jewish children who were sent from Germany and Austria to Britain by their parents, to get them out of harm's way. As an adult, Evelyn attempts to dissociate herself from her heritage and the trauma of her early years, only to be forced to recall when her daughter discovers papers and memorabilia revealing Eva's childhood in Germany and England.
Kindertransport has been widely performed and well received in both Britain and the United States. (There will be three other performances of
Kindertransport, as listed below. Each performance will be followed by a discussion of the play and its themes.)
Note: In keeping with traditional policy, no admission is charged to those who attend Memorial Week events. However, because of the costs involved in producing this play and the McCabe concert (see entry for May 2), those who attend either event are encouraged to provide donations to the Holocaust program -- $5 is suggested for the play, $8 for the concert; more is gratefully accepted. No one should feel obligated to make a donation.
May 5, 7:30 pmKindertransport (Play by Diane Samuels) at OSU Lab Theater, Withycombe Hall
This play focuses on Evelyn, born Eva, a woman who, in 1938, had joined thousands of other Jewish children who were sent from Germany and Austria to Britain by their parents, to get them out of harm's way. As an adult, Evelyn attempts to dissociate herself from her heritage and the trauma of her early years, only to be forced to recall when her daughter discovers papers and memorabilia revealing Eva's childhood in Germany and England.
Kindertransport has been widely performed and well received in both Britain and the United States. (There will be three other performances of
Kindertransport, as listed below. Each performance will be followed by a discussion of the play and its themes.)
Note: In keeping with traditional policy, no admission is charged to those who attend Memorial Week events. However, because of the costs involved in producing this play and the McCabe concert (see entry for May 2), those who attend either event are encouraged to provide donations to the Holocaust program -- $5 is suggested for the play, $8 for the concert; more is gratefully accepted. No one should feel obligated to make a donation.
May 5, 3:00 pmMy Knees Were Jumping and Visas and Virtue (Films) at Kidder Hall, Room 364
The first is an acclaimed documentary on the kindertransport. The second, which won an Academy Award as best short film in 1997, deals with Chiune Sugihara, the Japanese consul general in Lithuania on the eve of World War II. During the summer of 1940 Sugihara, acting alone and working at an exhausting pace, prepared thousands of travel visas that opened an avenue of escape for Lithuanian and Polish Jews who would otherwise have perished in the Holocaust.
May 4, 7:30 pmThe Quarrel (Film) at Construction and Engineering Auditorium, LaSells Stewart Center
This thought-provoking film focuses on two men who have a chance meeting. They had been boyhood friends during the 1930's and had studied together at yeshiva, but they had been separated by war. Both had endured time in concentration camps. Now, as they meet and converse, each learns how that experience had transformed the other. One is a fervent believer; the other, an atheist. After the film, Courtney Campbell, of the OSU Department of Philosophy, will comment on it and lead a discussion.
May 3, 7:30 pmAbraham Cooper: The Moral Power of Memory at Milam Auditorium
Abraham Cooper is associate dean of the Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles. In the course of researching Unit 731, he conducting interviews with a former member, and recently he spoke to a delegation from the Japanese Diet about the need for their government to acknowledge the atrocities that occurred in China during the occupation. His talk at OSU will draw in part on the issues he dealt with in his remarks to the Diet.
May 3, 3:00 pmIn the Name of the Emperor and What Did Hirohito Know? (Films) at Kidder Hall, Room 364
The first film deals with the massacre of Chinese residents of Nanking by the Japanese in 1937, while the second is about Unit 731, which engaged in human experiments and research on germ warfare, killing thousands of Chinese in the process.
May 2, 7:30 pmMusic in Remembrance (Concert) at First Presbyterian Church (114 SW 8th St., Corvallis)
Soloists include Rachelle McCabe (OSU music faculty), piano; Dana Mazurkevich, violin; Hamilton Cheifetz, cello; and Richard Poppino, baritone. The program will include renditions of Yiddish songs sung in the ghettos, including the well-known
Undzer Shtetl Brent ("Our Town is Burning") by Mordecai Gebirtig, the noted composer who, with his wife and two daughters, died in 1942 at the hands of the Nazis. These songs will be performed by Richard Poppino, accompanied by Rachelle McCabe. Dana Mazurkevich and Rachelle McCabe will perform
Baal Shem ("Three Pictures of Chassidic Life"), by Ernest Bloch. Hamilton Cheifetz, cellist, will perform the poignant
Kol Nidre, by Max Bruch. Mazurkevich, Cheifetz and McCabe will perform movements from the profound composition
Quartet for the End of Time, by Oliver Messiaen. Messiaen, a Catholic, composed this quartet while imprisoned in a concentration camp. Dana Mazurkevich will also perform the theme music from
Schindler's List. In addition to performing as a musician, she will speak to the audience as a Holocaust survivor. Born in 1941 in the Jewish ghetto of Kovno, she, along with her mother, survived thirteen selections -- any of which could easily have resulted in death -- before she was smuggled out of the ghetto to live out the war under the protection of a Lithuanian family. During the course of the evening, she will tell her story.
May 2, 12:30 pmWill Keim: Buber and the Ghettos at OSU Memorial Union, Room 208
Martin Buber, one of the towering figures of modern intellectual history, came perilously close to being caught up in the Holocaust. The story of his escape will the subject of this talk. Will Keim is noted as an inspirational speaker and the author of
The Education of Character. He wrote his doctoral dissertation on Buber.
May 1, 7:30 pmHelen Epstein: Why Remember the Holocaust? at Construction and Engineering Auditorium, LaSells Stewart Center
Helen Epstein is well known for her writings on the relationship between Holocaust survivors and their children - she herself is the daughter of survivors - especially two books:
Children of the Holocaust and
Where She Came From: A Daughter's Search for Her Mother's History. She is affiliated with the Center for European Studies at Harvard and the Hadassah International Research Institute on Jewish Women (Brandeis). In her talk at OSU, she will discuss how her quest for information on her mother's early years, in pre-war Czechoslovakia, dovetails with the broader issue of why the Holocaust must be remembered.
The support of OSU Convocations and Lectures has helped to make this event possible.
May 1, 12:00 pmRecitation of Kaddish (sponsored by Hillel) at Memorial Union Music Lounge
Kaddish also at noon on May 2, 3, 4, and 5.
April 30, 8:00 pmCommunity Vigil (sponsored by Hillel) at OSU Quad (if weather is bad, Memorial Union Ballroom)
April 30, 3:00 pmKindertransport (Play by Diane Samuels) at OSU Lab Theater, Withycombe Hall
This play focuses on Evelyn, born Eva, a woman who, in 1938, had joined thousands of other Jewish children who were sent from Germany and Austria to Britain by their parents, to get them out of harm's way. As an adult, Evelyn attempts to dissociate herself from her heritage and the trauma of her early years, only to be forced to recall when her daughter discovers papers and memorabilia revealing Eva's childhood in Germany and England.
Kindertransport has been widely performed and well received in both Britain and the United States. (There will be three other performances of
Kindertransport, as listed below. Each performance will be followed by a discussion of the play and its themes.)
Note: In keeping with traditional policy, no admission is charged to those who attend Memorial Week events. However, because of the costs involved in producing this play and the McCabe concert (see entry for May 2), those who attend either event are encouraged to provide donations to the Holocaust program -- $5 is suggested for the play, $8 for the concert; more is gratefully accepted. No one should feel obligated to make a donation.
April 29, 7:30 pmKindertransport (Play by Diane Samuels) at OSU Lab Theater, Withycombe Hall
This play focuses on Evelyn, born Eva, a woman who, in 1938, had joined thousands of other Jewish children who were sent from Germany and Austria to Britain by their parents, to get them out of harm's way. As an adult, Evelyn attempts to dissociate herself from her heritage and the trauma of her early years, only to be forced to recall when her daughter discovers papers and memorabilia revealing Eva's childhood in Germany and England.
Kindertransport has been widely performed and well received in both Britain and the United States. (There will be three other performances of
Kindertransport, as listed below. Each performance will be followed by a discussion of the play and its themes.)
Note: In keeping with traditional policy, no admission is charged to those who attend Memorial Week events. However, because of the costs involved in producing this play and the McCabe concert (see entry for May 2), those who attend either event are encouraged to provide donations to the Holocaust program -- $5 is suggested for the play, $8 for the concert; more is gratefully accepted. No one should feel obligated to make a donation.
Events in 1999April 15, 7:30 pmJudith E. Doneson: Is a Little Memory Better than None? at Construction and Engineering Auditorium, LaSells Stewart Center
As the Holocaust recedes into history, the media occupy a dominant position in translating to the public mind the destruction of European Jewry. American film and television, like the print media, regularly deal with Holocaust themes. Do they trivialize their subject? To what extent should we allow our sense of what the Holocaust was to be shaped by their portrayal? What risks lie in recounting the Holocaust for a broad audience, and do they outweigh potential benefits? These questions will be the focus of this lecture, which will be illustrated with videotaped portions of Holocaust films and television programs.
Judith E. Doneson teaches at Washington University and is the Administrative Director of the St. Louis Holocaust Museum and Learning Center. Her publications include
The Holocaust in American Film and the forthcoming
Encyclopedia of Holocaust Film.
April 14, 7:30 pmJacques Bergman: A Survivor's Story at Construction and Engineering Auditorium, LaSells Stewart Center
Each year, the Holocaust Memorial Week program includes a personal narrative by a survivor of the Holocaust. Even among survivors, however, the speaker this spring is exceptional in how long he was able to endure life in the hands of the Nazis.
Born in Vienna, Jacques Bergman joined other Jewish children in being transported to the Netherlands -- out of harm's way, it was thought -- in 1939. In 1942, however, he was apprehended and during the next three years he served as a slave laborer and was held in nine camps, including Auschwitz-Birkenau, before being liberated at Bergen-Belsen. He now lives in Oregon.
April 13, 7:30 pmLawrence L. Langer: Pursuit of Death in Holocaust Testimony: Literature and Art at Gilfillan Auditorium (Wilkinson Hall, OSU)
For more than two decades, Lawrence L. Langer (Professor Emeritus, Simmons College, Boston) has been a central figure in Holocaust Studies. His first book in the field,
The Holocaust and the Literary Imagination (1975), remains a classic study of Holocaust literature. In 1996, the New York Times listed Langer's 1991 book,
Holocaust Testimonies: The Ruins of Memory, as one of thirteen "books of particular permanent interest" published in the preceding 100 years. Professor Langer's many books and articles on the Holocaust also include
Art from the Ashes, a major Holocaust anthology; and
Admitting the Holocaust, a collection of his essays.
In many of his writings, Professor Langer has confronted the question of how the enormity of the Holocaust may be communicated -- if, in fact, it can be. Can mere words convey a true sense of what the Holocaust was? What role can the structured prose of Holocaust literature play in communication, and what part must be taken by survivor testimony? How do visual portrayals enhance our sense of association? In his talk at OSU, Langer will discuss the respective value and limitations of the various media. The talk will be illustrated by film clips of survivor testimony and by slides of paintings by Samuel Bak, a survivor of the Vilna Ghetto.
The support of OSU Convocations and Lectures has helped to make Professor Langer's appearance possible.
April 12, 7:00 pmSymposium: The Sciences in Nazi Germany at Construction and Engineering Auditorium, LaSells Stewart Center
Four distinguished historians will participate:
Ute Deichmann of the Institute of Genetics, University of Cologne, will speak on "
Jewish Chemists and Biochemists in Nazi Germany." The recipient of many professional honors, Dr. Deichmann is best known as the author of the highly acclaimed
Biologists Under Hitler.
Michael J. Neufeld, curator of the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, will address the topic, "Wernher von Braun and the Third Reich." Dr. Neufeld is the author of
Rocket and the Reich: Peenemuende and the Coming of the Ballistic Missile Era (recipient of the 1997 Dexter Prize from the Society for the History of Technology). He has also edited a forthcoming book,
The Bombing of Auschwitz: Should the Allies Have Attempted It?
"
Politics, 'Race' and Gender: Lise Meitner and the Discovery of Nuclear Fission" is the title of the paper to be presented by
Ruth Lewin Sime, a member of the chemistry faculty at Sacramento City College. In 1998 Dr. Sime's book,
Lise Meitner: A Life in Physics, received the Davis Prize from the History of Science Society.
Commenting on the papers will be
Alan D. Beyerchen (Professor of History, Ohio State University). Professor Beyerchen's 1977 book,
Scientists under Hitler: Politics and the Physics Community in the Third Reich, is of fundamental importance to its field and has been translated into five languages.
This symposium is funded by the Thomas Hart and Mary Jones Horning Endowment. Primary organizers, as well as participants in the event, are Mary Jo Nye (Horning Professor of the Humanities) and Dr. Ronald E. Doel, both of the Department of History at Oregon State.
Events in 1998April 23, 7:30 pmRobert N. Proctor: Racial Hygiene: Medicine under the Nazis at Engineering Auditorum, LaSells Stewart Center
During the Nazi era, German society took great pride in its scientific and medical achievements. With state sponsorship, many national health programs - anti-smoking campaigns, vegetarianism, and on among others - were initiated. This same concern for health, however, encouraged support for “racial hygiene,” a doctrine that in turn was used to justify efforts to purge Germany of Jews, mental defectives, and “undesirables.” More than 50% of German doctors joined the Nazi party. During the war, many of them conducted grotesque experiments on inmates at the camps and helped to select prisoners for liquidation. Proctor (Professor of the History of Science, Penn State University) is author of the standard, study of racial hygiene. In his talk, Professor Proctor will discuss how this doctrine took over the medical community.
This event is funded by the OSU Thomas Hart and Mary Jones Horning Endowment in the Humanities.
April 22, 7:30 pmDouglas K. Huneke: Fritz Graebe and the Spirit of Rescue at Engineering Auditorum, LaSells Stewart Center
While serving as manager for a corporate engineering firm in the Ukraine, Fritz Graebe saved about 100 Jewish employees during the annihilation of 5000 Jews at Rovno. To rescue even these few, he faced down an SS major who stood over them, whip in hand, and shouted that they too must die. Years later, When asked by a rabbi why he had risked his life for these Jews, Graebe retponded, “What would
you have done?” Douglas K. Huneke, minister to the Westminster Presbyterian Church in Tiburon, California, is author of
The Moses of Rovno, a biography of Graebe that is one of the best-known works on any rescuer. Reverend Huneke will analyze the moral and ethical code that prompted Graebe and other altruists to face danger themselves in order protect their fellow human beings.
April 21, 7:30 pmLeslie and Eva Aigner: Recalling the Horror at Engineering Auditorum, LaSells Stewart Center
Leslie Aigner, Czech by birth, moved to Budapest in 1943. In July 1944 he and two siblings were taken by cattle-car to Auschwitz. He was later transferred to Dachau, where he was liberated in 1945. Eva was born in Budapest and experienced much of the wartime horror there. Struggling with these memories, the Aigners remained silent for forty years before sharing their experiences publicly.
April 20, 3:30 pmTo Speak the Unspeakable: The Message of Elie Wiesel (Film) at State Theatre (219 SW 3rd St., Corvallis)
Elie Wiesel, Nobel Laureate and author of
Night - the best known of all survivor accounts of the camps - is the subject of this feature-length documentary. Written and directed by Judit Elek and narrated by William Hurt,
To Speak the Unspeakable follows Wiesel back to his birthplace in Rumania and depicts the Jewish community that flourished in his home town of Sighet before the war. From Rumania to Auschwitz to Buchenwald, the film recalls the journey that Wiesel took in 1944-45.
For this screening, which is among the first in the Northwest, Act III Cinemas has provided the State Theatre free of charge.
April 19, 7:30 pmJames E. Young: The Landscape of Memory: Holocaust Memorials in History at Engineering Auditorum, LaSells Stewart Center
In recent years, the number of Holocaust memorials has grown dramatically. These memorials serve various purposes and convey a range of messages. James E. Young (Professor of English and Judaic Studies, University of Massachusetts-Amherst) is an authority on Holocaust memorials and author of the acclaimed book,
The Texture of Memory. He recently served on a committee to create an official German memorial (and was the only non-German member). In his talk, Professor Young will explore the shifting landscape of Holocaust memory as reflected in the memorials and museums of Europe, Israel, and America. He will discuss how national self-idealization, politics, and aesthetic concerns affect public memory and memorialization.
The support of OSU Convocations and Lectures has helped to make this event possible.
Events in 1997May 8, 7:30 pmDavid H. Kitterman: Refusing Nazi Orders to Kill: Germans in Uniform Who Resisted the Holocaust at Withycombe Auditorium
David Kitterman teaches history at Northern Arizona University. The author of many articles and papers on the Holocaust, he has for many years been studying the phenomenon of Germans who refused orders to kill Jews and other civilians. A key aspect of his research has been to interview Germans who disobeyed such orders, as well as those who did obey.
On May 8 Professor Kitterman will discuss his findings about Germans who refused orders to kill, the consequences of their refusal, and why they behaved differently from the majority, who did join in the killing.
May 7, 7:30 pmItka Zygmuntowicz: Itka: A Story of Survival at Milam Auditorium
Itka Zygmuntowicz lost her entire family at Auschwitz. She herself survived, came to the U.S. after liberation, raised a family, and became an award-winning writer and poet. In recent years she has been active in speaking on behalf of the Association of Jewish Holocaust Survivors. She has participated in reunions of Holocaust survivors and memorial ceremonies at former camps, and appeared in a documentary on the Holocaust, From Out of the Ashes.
In her talk at OSU Mrs. Zygmuntowicz will recall, and reflect on, her wartime experiences.
May 6, 7:30 pmElie Wiesel: Ethics after the Holocaust (Film) at Engineering Auditorum, LaSells Stewart Center
Celebrated as a writer, a scholar, and a humanitarian, Wiesel is the recipient of the Nobel Prize for Peace, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and many other awards that recognize his pivotal role in memorializing the Holocaust and in working for human rights. His many books include several on the Holocaust, most prominent among them
Night, a memoir of his boyhood experiences in the camps.
The event on May 6 will be a screening of a videotape of the keynote talk that Wiesel gave at a symposium held in Eugene in May 1996. Videotapes of three other talks from the symposium, each by a well-known Holocaust scholar, will be screened on the afternoon of May 7.
May 5, 7:30 pmJohn M. Steiner: The Perpetrator's Role and His Discretion Margin under Totalitarian Structural and Situational Constraints at Engineering Auditorum, LaSells Stewart Center
During World War II, John Steiner was interned at Dachau and several other camps. Now a professor emeritus of sociology at Sonoma State University, he has published a number of books and articles on Nazi Germany and on the Holocaust. His extensive research has included interviews with leading Nazi government officials and with former S.S. men. Professor Steiner often gives public talks on Holocaust topics, and he has been instrumental is establishing a renowned Holocaust program at Sonoma State.
In his talk on May 5, Professor Steiner will discuss the question of whether Germans who joined in the killings during the Holocaust did so of their own free will. He will also describe the circumstances that led them to participate in genocide.
May 4, 6:00 pmStanley Swan: The Remnant at Engineering Auditorum, LaSells Stewart Center
In April 1945 American troops liberated the Flossenberg concentration camp. The Holocaust Memorial Week program will begin with an exhibit of twenty photos taken at the time of liberation, photos that recall the harshness of life and death at Flossenberg. The exhibit will be available for viewing only this evening, in the hallway outside the Engineering Auditorium.
At 7:30, Stanley Swan, who served with an American unit that liberated another German camp, will discuss his experience and what he observed.
Prior to Swan's talk Helen Berg, mayor of Corvallis, will read a proclamation in recognition of Holocaust Memorial Week.
Events in 1996April 19, 12:00 pmDiscussion: Reflections on the Holocaust at Westminster House (23rd and Monroe)
This presents an opportunity for all of us to get together and discuss the Holocaust and its meaning, to reflect on the various events and activities of Holocaust Memorial Week, and to offer suggestions for future programs.
April 18, 7:30 pmRobert Jay Lifton: Genocidal Mentality - Nazi Doctors and the Holocaust at Austin Auditorium, LaSells Stewart Center
Robert Jay Lifton, Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry and Psychology at John Jay College, City University of New York, is renowned in three disciplines: history, psychology, and sociology. His honors include the Gandhi Peace Award (1984), the National Book Award for sciences (1969), and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for history (1987). Among Lifton's more than twenty books are two major contributions to Holocaust literature:
The Nazi Doctors and
The Genocidal Mentality. In his public talk he will combine insights from these two works.
April 17, 7:00 pmTwo (Play by Ron Elisha; performed by Judith Berlowitz and Mike Aronson) at Beit Am (625 NW 36th St., Corvallis)
The play is set in 1948. Intent on studying Hebrew, Anna visits a rabbi. As the action unfolds, each learns that the other was at Auschwitz during the war -- he as an inmate, she as a member of the SS. Their discussions reveal good and evil, and how they can blend.
Admission: $5.00, to cover royalties.
April 16, 7:30 pmFrank Unger: German Historians Debate the Significance of the Holocaust in the History of Germany at Engineering Auditorum, LaSells Stewart Center
Dr. Unger, who teaches Political Science at the Free University of Berlin, has published extensively on modern German and American history and politics. He is currently a fellow of the OSU Center for the Humanities and is working on a book comparing neo-Nazi movements in contemporary Germany and the U.S.
April 15, 7:30 pmKnud Dyby: Rescue and Resistance in Denmark during the German Occupation 1940-1945 at Engineering Auditorum, LaSells Stewart Center
During 1943 the Germans occupied Denmark and made plans to deport Danish Jews to the death camps. During the night of September 30-October 1, however, thousands of Danes took part in transporting their Jewish countrymen to safety in Sweden. While most other nations in Nazi-occupied Europe cooperated with the deportation of Jews, the Danish rescue was so successful that not a single Danish Jew is known to have died at the hands of the Nazis.
During the war, Knud Dyby served on the Danish police force. He played a significant role in the rescue of the Danish Jews and for his work has been recognized as a "Righteous Gentile" by Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem. Mr. Dyby's talk, which will focus on the Danes' struggle to save the Jews, will be preceded by a short film,
Rescue in October.
April 14, 7:30 pmAddress Unknown (Dramatic reading directed by Charlotte Headrick (OSU Speech Dept.) and read by Neil Davison (OSU English) and Ze'ev Orzech (OSU Economics, emeritus)) at Engineering Auditorum, LaSells Stewart Center
Kressman Taylor's
Address Unknown, a novella published in 1938, is based on an actual exchange of letters between two business partners and friends -- an American Jew and a German who has returned to his native land after some time in the U.S. Set in 1933, the year Hitler came to power, they reflect the German correspondent's slide into Nazism and the resultant disintegration of his relationship with his partner in America.
Events in 1995April 28, 12:00 pmA Community Discussion: Holocaust Issues: Some Further Reflections at Westminster House (23rd and Monroe)
This will be an opportunity to share impressions regarding the week's events, or generally views on the Holocaust and its meaning.
April 27, 7:30 pmMarion Kaplan: Trying to Weather the Storm: Jewish Women's Responses to Daily Life in Nazi Germany at Engineering Auditorum, LaSells Stewart Center
Kaplan, a professor of history at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, is the author of
The Making of the Jewish Middle Class: Women, Family and Identity in Imperial Germany and
The Jewish Feminist Movement in Germany: The Campaigns of the Juedischer Frauenbund, 1904-1938. She co-edited another important work,
When Biology Became Destiny: Women in Weimar and Nazi Germany, and is currently working on a book that will focus on German Jewish women throughout the Nazi period, to the final deportation order in 1943.
April 26, 7:30 pmMichael Franzblau: Eugenics and Racialism: The Foundations of Nazi Medicine at Main meeting room, Corvallis Public Library
Franzblau, a practicing physician, has taught courses at Stanford and elsewhere on the subject of Nazi medicine: its origins, its history, its implications for medical ethics. This talk will focus on the ideologies that permitted and encouraged German physicians to torture and kill thousands of Jews, as well as non-Jews with physical or mental defects.
April 25, 7:30 pmSam Soldinger: Recollections of a Schindler-Jew at Milam Auditorium
Soldinger was fifteen when the Nazis invaded Poland and forced him and his family into a ghetto in his native Cracow. His mother and sister subsequently perished in a death camp, and he might have as well, had he not been hired to work in one of Schindler's factories, after a personal interview with Schindler. Soldinger was again endangered when the factory closed, and he was later sent to the notorious labor camp at Mauthausen. He retains vivid memories of many individuals who are portrayed in the film,
Schindler's List: Schindler himself, other "Schindler-Jews," and Nazi architects of the Final Solution.
April 24, 7:00 pmDinner and Program with Holocaust Survivors and Liberators at Senior Citizens' Center
Dinner and program observing the 50th anniversary of the liberation of the camps. Guests will include survivors and liberators.
To make a reservation, call 737-3421 or 737-2388.
Cost: $15.00.
April 23, 7:00 pmSchindler's List (Film) at Engineering Auditorum, LaSells Stewart Center
A public sreening of Schindler's List, Steven Spielberg's highly acclaimed film about Oskar Schindler, the Nazis he confronted, and the Jews he saved.
Events in 1994April 7, 7:30 pmHolocaust Questions: Some Further Reflections at Westminster House, 101 NW 23rd, Corvallis
A conversation led by Oregon State University faculty.
For more information, please phone 541-753-2242.
April 6, 7:30 pmMemories of the Camps and Reunion (Films) at LaSells Stewart Center
Memories of the Camps (60 min.) A
Frontline documentary on the liberation of Bergen-Belsen, Dachau, and other concentration camps by the Allies in 1945. Based primarily on footage shot by the British, it provides graphic evidence about the treatment of camp inmates during the last months of the war.
Reunion (30 min.) For more than forty years, the survivor of a concentration camp and the former G.I. who liberated that camp lived in Seattle, unknown to each other. This is the record of their reunion and their recollections.
April 5, 7:30 pmDr. John K. Roth: Holocaust Questions: Some Religious and Philosophical Reflections After Auschwitz at LaSells Stewart Center
Dr. John K. Roth, the Russel K. Pitzer Professor of Philosophy at Claremont McKenna College, has published three major books on the Holocaust and lectures widely on the subject. In 1988, he was designated National Professor of the Year by the Council of Advancement and Support of Education.
April 4, 7:30 pmDaniel's Story and Genocide (Films) at LaSells Stewart Center
Daniel’s Story (14 min.) Produced by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, especially for younger viewers. One child speaks for many who suffered in the concentration camps.
Genoclde (90 min.) is an Academy Award-winning portrayal of man’s inhumanity to man—the story of the millions of men, women, and children who fell victim to Hitler’s Final Solution. A unique multi-image documentary,
Genocide combines historical narrative with actual stories of ordinary people caught up in the Nazis’ reign of terror. Narrated by Orson Welles and Elizabeth Taylor.
Events in 1993April 22, 7:30 pmDr. Lawrence Langer: Time: Chronology & Duration in Holocaust Testimonies at LaSells Stewart Center
Dr. Lawrence Langer, Professor Emeritus, Simmons College, who has worked extensively with the written and oral testimonies of camp survivors, will speak on
Memory’s Time: Chronology & Duration in Holocaust Testimonies. Dr. Langer is the Curator for the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies at Yale University, which will provide the material for this lecture. Langer authored the highly acclaimed Holocaust Testimony: The Ruins of Memory.
April 20, 7:30 amHolocaust Memorial Breakfast at OSU Memorial Union, Room 109
Rachael McClinton, creator of “Through the Eyes of a Friend,” an interactive video about Anne Frank, will speak of her experiences in presenting this program to middle school students throughout the Pacific Northwest. Also, dramatic readings by Crescent Valley High School students, musical selections by local musicians, and a Holocaust Proclamation by Corvallis Mayor Charles Vars.
Reservations required by noon, Friday, April 16, 1993, call 737-4652.
Cost $5.00/adult and $2.50/students.
April 19, 7:30 pmWeapons of the Spirit (Film) at LaSells Stewart Center
A superb documentary which recounts how in one small corner of Occupied France, 5,000 Jews were sheltered by an equal number of Christians despite Nazi threats of punishment for doing so. Interviews of villagers and peasants and archived news reel footage recreate the history of Le Chambon -- the town with a tradition for helping “guests in need” in the midst of terror and death.
April 18, 7:30 pmImage Before My Eyes (Film) at LaSells Stewart Center
Resurrects the rich, unique life of Jewish Poland before World War I. Through home movies, photographs, memorabilia, music, and interviews of survivors, we re-experience a lost culture: rich and poor, religious and secular, socialist and Zionist, each marching under its own banner into a future that vanished with the Holocaust.
Events in 1992April 28, 7:30 pmDr. Michael Marrus: Historians on the Holocaust at LaSells Stewart Center
Dr. Michael Marrus, Professor of History, University of Toronto is author of
Vichy France and the Jews, which received the National Jewish Book Award in 1982, and
The Holocaust in History, which received academic prizes in 1988 and 1989. He serves on numerous editorial and advisory boards for Holocaust studies.
April 28, 7:30 amHolocaust Memorial Breakfast at OSU Memorial Union, Room 109
Cantor Jack Falk and the klezmer group, OOMPH! have just returned from the International Festival of Jewish Music held in Siberia. The group will perform and Jack will speak on “First-Hand Impressions of a Vanishing World.” Corvallis Mayor Charles Vars will proclaim Holocaust Memorial Week in Corvallis and students from Corvallis High School will present an excerpt from
The Diary of Anne Frank.
Reservations required by noon, Friday, April 24, 1992. Call 737-4652.
Cost $5 per person.
April 27, 7:30 pmGenocide (Film) at LaSells Stewart Center
This Academy Award-winning documentary is the story of man’s inhumamity to man—the story of the millions of men, women, and children who fell victim to Hitler’s Final Solution. A unique multi-image documentary,
Genocide combines historical narrative actual stories of ordinary people caught up in the Nazis’ reign of terror. Narrated by Orson Welles and Elizabeth Taylor.
April 26, 7:30 pmEchoes That Remain (Film) at LaSells Stewart Center
This film documents the pre-war life of Eastern European Jewish communities (shtetls). Using a mixture of spectacular imagery, music and classic tales, the film recreates these now extinct communities. The film’s power comes from use of pre-war photos rather than explicit Holocaust footage.
Sponsored by Hillel/OSU Jewish Student Union.
Events in 1991April 9, 8:00 pmDr. Michael Berenbaum: The Holocaust and the American Experience at Austin Auditorium, LaSells Stewart Center
Professor of Theology at Georgetown University will speak on
The Holocaust and the American Experience. Among his students has been the famed black American entertainer Pearl Bailey, who wrote of Berenbaurn: “The wisdom I gained from Berenbaum’s class is priceless. He is young, aggressive, tough, wise as some sages of yore, and brilliant as a diamond.” The author of a number of books on the Holocaust, Dr. Berenbaum is also the Project Director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C.
April 9, 7:30 amHolocaust Memorial Breakfast at OSU Memorial Union, Room 109
Join Corvallis Mayor Charles Vars and the Reverend Taryn Hillary of Westminister House, drama students from Corvallis and Crescent Valley High Schools, and others to remember the victims of the Holocaust.
Reservations are required by noon, Friday, April 5. Call 737-2388.
Cost $5.00 per person.
April 8, 8:00 pmGenocide (Film) at Construction and Engineering Auditorium, Lasells Stewart Center
A documentary that tells the history of Hitler’s “final solution.’ Set within an historic frame —from the 1920s when waves of anti-Semitism swept through Germany, to 1945 when the remnants of European Jewry were released from the death camps — the film exposes the methodical insanity of the Nazi era.
April 7, 8:00 pmThe Diary of Anne Frank (Film) at Construction and Engineering Auditorum, LaSells Stewart Center
This gripping drama is based on the famous diary written by the teenaged Anne Frank while her family and other Jews hid themselves from the Germans during the Nazi occupation of Holland. In desperate circumstances, Anne refused to give up her dream of a better life or her faith, The film is not only .a moving story of survival during the Holocaust, but a touching examination of a young girl’s coming of age. The film received six Academy Award nominations and was awarded two Oscars.
Sponsored by Hillel/OSU Jewish Student Union
Events in 1990April 25, 8:00 pmDr. Christopher R. Browning: Holocaust Perpetrators: "Desk Murderers" and "Shooters" at LaSells Stewart Center
Dr. Christopher R. Browning, Professor of History at Pacific Lutheran University, is a noted scholar of Holocaust studies. He has just returned from a year’s sabbatical at Yad Vashem, the Israeli memorial museum, and has been invited to write a volume in the multi-volume series on the Holocaust that will be published by the museum. .Browning’s many fine publications include
The Final Solution and the German Foreign Office and
Fateful Months: Essays on the Emergence of the Final Solution.
April 24, 12:00 pmMurray Brown: Survivor Testimony at OSU Memorial Union, Room 105
Murray Brown, who endured four years in the camps, including three death camps, will speak of his experiences.
April 24, 7:30 amHolocaust Memorial Breakfast at OSU Memorial Union, Room 109
Join Corvallis Mayor Charles Vars, and others to remember the victims of the Holocaust.
Reservations are required by noon Monday, April 23, 1990. Call 737-2388.
Cost $5.per person.
April 23, 8:00 pmThe Wannsee Conference (Film) at Construction and Engineering Auditorum, LaSells Stewart Center
At Wannsee, a Berlin suburb, fourteen representatives of the Nazi party, the SS, and the government met in January, 1942, to complete plans for the “Final Solution.” This highly acclaimed film is a recreation of the actual conference, based on the notes of the secretary. “85 minutes that scarred history” --
New York Times.
April 22, 8:00 pmGenocide (Film) at Construction and Engineering Auditorum, LaSells Stewart Center
An historical treatment of the Holocaust narrated by Elizabeth Taylor and Orson Welles. The film will be followed by a discussion.
Sponsored by Hillel/OSU Jewish Student Union.
Events in 1989May 3, 8:00 pmDr. Robert Erickson: German Theologians and the Holocaust at LaSells Stewart Center
Dr. Robert Erickson, Professor of History at Olympic College, will discuss how otherwise good and intelligent people could make catastrophic mistakes in terms of their political/ethical decisions.
May 2, 8:00 pmFred Manela: Don’t Sleep at Home Tonight (Film and talk) at LaSells Stewart Center
The film depicts a little-known band of young resisters in Berlin who tried to persuade their fellow Jews of the impending danger of “Kristallnacht,” the first major physical assault on the Jews in Nazi Germany. On November 9, 1938, Jewish places of worship and stores owned by Jews were set on fire throughout the country. Of what was a 42-member resistance group, Mr. Manela, is the sole survivor.
May 2, 7:30 amBreakfast: Days of Remembrance at OSU Memorial Union, Room 109
Join Corvallis Mayor Charles Vars, Reverend John Dennis, and others to commemorate the victims of the Holocaust.
Reservations required by Noon, May 1st. Call 754-2111.
Cost $5 per person.
May 1, 8:00 pmThe Boat is Full (Film) at LaSells Stewart Center
Exceptionally moving, this 1983 Swiss film portrays the difficulties faced by Jews attempting to gain sanctuary In Switzerland during the Holocaust. Helps to explain why so few Jews escaped.
April 27, 8:00 pmThe Garden of the Finzi Continis (Film) at LaSells Stewart Center
This 1970 Vittorio De Sica classic examines the tragedy of an aristocratic Jewish family in Fascist Italy during World War II. Based on the account of an eyewitness to that tragedy. In Italian, with subtitles.
Sponsored by Hillel/OSU Jewish Student Union.
Events in 1988April 14, 8:00 pmDr. David Biale: The Uses sand Abuses of the Holocaust at LaSells Stewart Center
The speaker, Dr. David Biale, is one of America’s most knowledgeable scholars of Jewish history. He is he Director of the Center of Judaic Studies at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California.
April 13, 8:00 pm2nd Avenue West at LaSells Stewart Center
A talented group of Northwest musicians recreate the music of European Jewish communities destroyed in the Holocaust.
April 12, 7:30 amBreakfast: Days of Remembrance at OSU Memorial Union, Room 109
Join Rabbi Bruce Diamond and the Corvallis community to commemorate the victims of the Holocaust.
Reservations required by noon April 11. Call 754-2111.
Cost: $5 per person.
April 10, 7:00 pmWitness to the Holocaust (Film) at LaSells Stewart Center
Recounted by eyewitnesses, this film provides a vivid and honest description of the atrocities of the Jewish Holocaust.
Events in 1987April 29, 7:30 pmSylvia Frankel: "Courage to Care" — Rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust at Austin Auditorium, LaSells Stewart Center
Sylvia Frankel is the director of the Oregon Holocaust Resource Center. A reception will be held in the OSU LaSells Stewart Center Lobby.
April 28, 7:30 amHolocaust Memorial Breakfast and Program at OSU Memorial Union, Room 109
Holocaust Memorial Breakfast — 7:30-8:00 a.m.
Holocaust Memorial Program — 8:00-9:00 a.m.
For reservations call OSU Academic Affairs at 754-2111.
Cost: $4.50 — Make check payable to OSU/MU Food Service.
April 27, 7:30 pmGenocide (A 90-minute video-tape film) at Engineering Auditorium, LaSells Stewart Center
A historical treatment of the events of the Holocaust. Paul Kopperman, History Dept., will respond to audience questions.
View printable page.
