April 17, 2025
For Elie Wiesel, one of the most important lessons of the Holocaust was to always speak out against emerging genocides: âHow could a Jew like myself, with experiences and memories like mine, stay at home and not go to the aid of an entire people?â Already by 2023 the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum was […]
October 26, 2024
In Memory of Margot Capell: October 21 2024 Only two days before her 104th birthday, Holocaust survivor Margot Capell passed away peacefully in her home. Our hearts are broken. Margot Capell was a woman of valor, intelligence and strength. She told her history to hundreds of youth, from 3rd graders to college, and they hung […]
September 5, 2024
âSixty-four years have passed since my liberation from the concentration camp. I no longer can remember where I last put my glasses, yet I rememberâclear as lightâscenes that turned my sunny childhood into an inferno and killed nearly everyone I loved. I ask myself, How did my mother, my sister, and I survive? How did […]
June 5, 2024
WCHC Intern and Wagner College PA Student James Merlino joined over 60 Wagner students and faculty to pay hommage in Normandy, France, to American soldiers--amongthem many Staten Islanders--on the 80th Anniversary of the D-Day landing. "It was made even more special by our visit to the graves of Staten Islanders who were buried there." James […]
April 16, 2024
On April 9 2024 the WCHC Advisory Board held its Annual Mitzvah Awards, recognizing outstanding individuals in our community who have dedicated themselves to fighting hate in all its forms, including honorees - Rabbi Kerry Olitzky, Dan Glassman, Stefania Hecht (posthumously), Susan Sappin, Rev. Dr. Agnes McBeth, Aubrie Mei Rubel â23, Stephen Greenwald. The final […]
July 12, 2023
âSo much has been written on the way the Nazis used art in Germany, but very little on art in Nazi Vienna, and almost nothing at all in English,â notes Dr. Laura Morowitz, whose forthcoming book, Art, Exhibition and Erasure (Routledge, 2023) sets out to change that. Morowitz has been a Professor of Art History […]
June 14, 2023
Sari Kingsley never got to meet her mother's brother, Mendel Schleifer, but all her life felt a strong connection to him. Her connection was embodied by a painting that her Uncle Mendel painted as a handsome young man and which he sent to her mother in New York in 1938. Less than one year later […]
May 31, 2023
On August 1, 2023 Yale University Press will release Wolf Grunerâs Resisters. How Ordinary Jews fought Persecution in Hitler's Germany. Gruner is Founding Director of the USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research, and Shapell-Guerin Chair in Jewish Studies and Professor of History, University of Southern California. Described as âa highly original and compelling account […]
March 8, 2023
In her welcoming letter to an international community of Holocaust scholars on our campus, Fern Zagorâtireless and devoted Chair of the Wagner College Chai Societyâwrote of â...the courage of the spirit, daring to believe in the future against unfathomable, indescribable odds.â Fighting for social justice and to protect those less fortunate has always been […]
November 12, 2022
On Nov. 10, 2022, the 7th Annual Egon J. Salmon and Family Commemoration of Kristallnacht and the St. Louis was held at Wagner College. Two Second Generation (2G) speakers shared their reflections on their parentsâ and grandparentsâ strategies to escape Nazi Germany and their compelling messages to the next generation. Susan Slater and Joan Loeb […]