About Us
Dr. Lori Weintrob, Director, Wagner College Holocaust Center
Dr. Lori Weintrob is Professor of History and founding director of the Wagner College Holocaust Center, Staten Island, New York. She teaches Nazi Germany and the Holocaust and the Holocaust in Film, Theater and the Arts. Lori has connected Holocaust survivors with thousands of youth of all faiths in the tri-state area. She is co-editor of Beyond Bystanders: Educational Leadership for a Human Culture in a Globalizing Reality (2017) and Maternalism Reconsidered: Motherhood, Welfare and Social Policy in the Twentieth Century (2012). She is co-author of the original play Rise Up: Young Holocaust Heroes. Recent presentations include “Thou Shalt not be a bystander: Holocaust Education for Empathy, Ethics and Courage,” at Kibbutzim College of Education and “Heroines of the Holocaust: Vitka Kempner-Kovner and Sara Ginaite” for the Museum of Jewish Heritage. She is currently editing Eyewitness to History: Documents of the Holocaust (ABC-CLIO Press) and completing a project on Zivia Lubetkin and other female resistance leaders. She has received awards for community-building and interfaith social justice activism, including with African-American and African Youth, the Albanian-Islamic Cultural Center and the Pride Center of Staten Island. She was fortunate to have studied the Holocaust with Saul Friedlander. Lori received her B.A. from Princeton University and her M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).
Dr. Laura Morowitz, Senior Programming and Research Assistant
Dr. Laura Morowitz is Professor of Art History at Wagner College, and Faculty Board Member of the Wagner College Holocaust Center. In 2012 she began teaching her course on Art and Aesthetics in the Third Reich and in 2019 she and Dr. Weintrob designed and curated the Center’s Education and Action Gallery. She is the author of three books and has published in The Art Bulletin, Art Journal, The Oxford Art Journal, The Journal of the History of Collections, The Journal of Popular Film and Television and Cultural Critique among other places. In 2011 she received a Hadassah Brandeis Research Institute Award for her work on a book dealing with Klimt’s confiscated Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer. Her co-edited volume, with Dr. Megan Brandow-Faller, Erasures and Eradications in Modern Viennese Art, Architecture and Design, is forthcoming from Routledge Press in 2022. Art, Exhibition and Erasure in Nazi Vienna, for which she was a awarded an NEH summer stipend in 2017 , will be published by Routledge Press, Art and Politics Series, in 2023.She will be contributing the chapter on Art and the Holocaust to Sources for Studying the Holocaust:A Guide for Students, edited by Paul Bartrop.
Holocaust Center: Mission Statement
Our mission is to empower future generations in empathy, courage, and ethical decision-making in order to combat anti-Semitism, racism & all forms of prejudice.
Chai Society: Vision Statement
The Chai Society supports a flourishing and exciting celebration of Jewish life, culture, faith and learning on the Wagner College campus. It will encourage the development of academic studies and co-curricular activities on Judaism, Jews in American Society, Israel and the Holocaust. It will work to stimulate students to engage in an open community of study and self-discovery that will help them to become passionate, informed Jewish leaders on campus, in their communities and after their time in college.
Chai Society: Mission Statement
The mission of the Wagner College Chai Society is to strengthen the ties between Wagner College and the Jewish Community through support of academic studies and co-curricular activities on Judaism, Israel and the Holocaust; to support a vibrant Holocaust Center, Hillel and other programs; and to educate continuing generations on the ramifications of prejudice, anti-Semitism and racism in order to promote openness to all.
Chai Society Advisory Board
Chairs:
- Fern Zagor
Members:
- Victor and Kim Avis
- Ron Avis
- Dennis and Elaine Bloomfield
- Stephen Greenwald
- Marcia Klein
- Orit Lender
- Scott Salmon
- Damian Slattery
- Marjorie Steinberg
- Nancy Tricorico
- Frank Weile
Faculty Advisory Committee:
- Dr. Emily Barth, PhD
- Dr. Laura Morowitz, PhD
- Dr. Ruta Shah-Gordon, PhD
- Dr. Lori Weintrob, PhD
Wagner College Hillel Mission Statement:
Wagner College Hillel strives to promote and inspire Jewish students on campus to embrace their identity, culture, and religion while learning, sharing and involving themselves with other students who have different beliefs and backgrounds.
Hillel encourages a safe atmosphere on campus where students can feel welcomed no matter what their religious affiliations are. Hillel aims to impact the Wagner community through open-mindedness, education, and acceptance.
Hillel is a part of Campus Life.
Laura Morowitz
Professor, Visual Arts
718-390-3151 lmorowit@wagner.edu Main Hall 3rd floor--43Laura Morowitz's scholarship focuses on late nineteenth and early twentieth century European art, as well as art in Nazi Vienna.
Lori Weintrob
Professor/Holocaust Center Director, History Department
lrweintr@wagner.edu Parker Hall 208Ruta Shah-Gordon
Vice President of Enrollment and Campus Life, Campus Life
rshahgor@wagner.edu Union 4th FloorOversees all campus life offices.
Emily Barth
Assistant Professor, English Department
emily.barth@wagner.edu Parker Hall 315My research and writing focuses on early modern literature and culture, gender and emotion in early literature, and digital humanities.