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March 2023
Concerned and Courageous: Teachers and Social Workers as Heroines of the Holocaust
Speaker Kay Matello, M.A. Education Coordinator at the Museum of History and Holocaust Education at Kennesaw State University, Georgia discusses how female teachers and social workers resisted Nazi atrocities in Germany and occupied Poland.
For more information, contact Lori Weintrob, Director, holocaust.center@wagner.edu
Jewish and Roma Memory of Transnistria
Ukranian-born scholar Hanna Abakunova, PhD, now at Uppsala University, Sweden, will examine interethnic relations during the Holocaust between Jews and Roma, on the one hand, and those who came to their assistance (mainly Ukrainians, but also Crimean Tatars and ethnic Germans), based on interviews she collected with a group of Ukranian and Polish scholars.
Her talk explores the exhibit she co-curated which will be on display at the Spotlight Gallery, Wagner College Library, from March 10-April 10.
Guests can attend in person or via Zoom. For more information or Zoom info contact the Holocaust Center via email at holocaust.center@wagner.edu.
April 2023
Sisters in Survival: Female Solidarity in the Ghettos and Concentration Camps
Second Generation survivors Fern Zagor and Ram Roth will share stories from their mothers survival in the Warsaw Ghetto, Auschwitz and Majdanek for the 80th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
Scholar Daan de Leeuw will also give his lecture on "Jewish Women in the Lublin-Majdanek Camp System."
Guests can attend in person or via Zoom. To register for zoom access visit wagner.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJYufuCorTwsHd0UAHI3_udd_xUd4-aBfNd4.
For more information, contact the Holocaust Center at holocaust.center@wagner.edu.
Rising Up: Young Holocaust Heroes
Local students and community members will take part in the largest Holocaust Remembrance Commemoration in NYC.
"Rising Up" is an original play based on survivor testimony and will be directed by Mickey Tennenbaum and written by Lori Weintrob, Theresa McCarthy and Martin Moran.
Location: St. George Theatre, 35 Hyatt Street, Staten Island, NY 10301
Tickets are $12.
For more information, contact the Holocaust Center at holocaust.center@wagner.edu.
Staten Island Community Day Closing Ceremony
During this ceremony we will recognize those community members that lead by example.
2023 Honorees: Mendy Mirocznik, President COJO; Aur Torah Sephardic Minyan, Rabbi Aharon Zeev; Bari's Pizza Pasta (Krenar and Skelzen Fazlija); Zara Cafe and Grill (Ramazan Avci); Hasan Ibrahim (Wagner College Bio-Psychology major, co-President of the Muslim Student Association); Dr. Beqir Ardolic, Executive Director, Staten Island University Hospital; Central Family Life Center (Dr. Demetrius Carolina); Rev. Clement James, Jr., Dir. of Faith-based Outreach Office of Governor Cuomo; Patrol Borough Staten Island Frank Vega; Project Hospitality and Rev. Terry Troia.
Founded in 2003, this is the 20th anniversary of Community Days.
May 2023
Humans of Tel Aviv Exhibit Artist Meet & Greet
Hillel of Wagner College celebrates Israel's 75th Birthday with a tour of the photography exhibit Humans of Tel Aviv and a Meet & Greet with Israeli street photographer Erez Kaganovitz. "Humans of Tel Aviv" immerses us in a rich diversity of the people and stories.
Location: Murray Berman Art @ the J Gallery
Bernikow JCC, 1466 Manor Road, Staten Island, NY 10314
Go on your own or join Hillel students leaving from the Gazebo near the Main Gate at 2:40 (return at 4:15).
Sponsored by ZOA, Hillel of CSI and Wagner College Hillel In collaboration with Katz Cherry Hill JCC.
June 2023
Heroines of the Holocaust: Nurses and Doctors as Resisters in the Holocaust and Genocide
Join us as six international scholars on the Holocaust and genocide, including three members of the Lancet Committee on Medicine and the Holocaust, present heroic acts of courage by nurses, doctors and medical personnel in the Holocaust, the Rwandan Genocide and other moments of genocide. Faculty from Nursing schools in the U.S. and abroad discuss the transformative power of using these real life stories to increase empathy, ethical decision making and professional identity within the medical field.
For full agenda visit wagner.edu/holocaust-center.
Lectures can be attend in person or via Zoom. Click here to register for Zoom. Click here to register for Zoom.
October 2023
Black Angels: The Nurses Who Cured Tuberculosis
Not unlike the recent COVID epidemic, TB or tuberculosis raged across the United States, killing over 5 million Americans in the early 20th century. Fearing a public health crisis in New York City, in 1929, officials made a call for Black nurses seeking to work on the front lines and promising them good pay and an escape from Jim Crow. The Black Angels follows the intrepid women who risked their lives caring for the city’s poorest—1,800 patients at Staten Island’s Sea View Hospital—and aided in the 1951 clinical trial of a breakthrough tuberculosis treatment.
About the Speakers
Author Maria Smilios chronicles the voices of these extraordinary women in "The Black Angels: The Untold Story of the Nurses Who Helped Cure Tuberculosis" (G. P. Putnam’s Sons; on sale: Sept. 19, 2023). Smilios has a Masters of Arts from Boston University in Religion & Literature where she was a Henry Luce Scholar. She worked as Development Editor in the Biomedical Sciences at Springer Science & Media. She has written for The Guardian, American Nurse, and The Jewish Daily Forward among others.
Virginia Allen worked as a nurse at Sea View Hospital (1947-57), is a volunteer at the Schomburg Center and many other not-for-profits, and is a 2005 Staten Island Woman of Achievement.
This event is made possible by the NetVUE Saga Grant and the Lily Foundation, and is in honor of the 80th anniversary of the Evelyn L. Spiro School of Nursing.
Art produced by women prisoners in Auschwitz
Join Dr. Laura Morowitz's AH310 class as we host a guest lecture by Bozena Karwowska, Professor, Department of Central, Eastern and Northern European Studies and Chair of Modern European Studies, the University of British Columbia.
About the Lecture
Art created in Auschwitz is an important testimony of prisoners’ experience of the camp; it is a source of valuable information about many aspects of the camp. There are also interesting differences between art created by male and female prisoners, in large measure related to them occupying different spaces of the camp complex, but also due to the arrival of the first women only after two years of the camp’s existence. This talk will discuss the art created in Auschwitz (official and “forbidden”) with a special focus on women as both artists and subjects, their roles, and how these are relayed through their painted, drawn and written testimonies.
About Dr. Karwowska
Dr. Karwowska is the author of a study of Polish literature of the Holocaust, with a particular focus on the first hand testimonies written immediately after the war, Gender, Sexuality, Concentration Camps (Krakow University, 2009). Her 2013 book, Second Sex in Exile. Migration in Narratives by Polish Postwar Female Writers, was nominated for Jan Kochanowski Prize for the best book on Polish literature and culture.
This event is co-sponsored by the Wagner College Holocaust Center. For Zoom link email holocaust.center@wagner.edu.
Rescue in Rwanda
Jennie E. Burnett, Director of the Institute for Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, associate professor in the Department of Anthropology at Georgia State University presents research from her new book, To Save Heaven and Earth: Rescue in the Rwandan Genocide, Cornell University Press, 2023, joined by Providence Umugwaneza, Survivor of the Genocide against the Tutsi, author Next Couple Hours.
Guests can attend in person in Manzulli Board Room or vitually via Zoom. Email the Holocaust Center at holocaust.center@wagner.edu for Zoom link.