Programs
EVENTS: SPRING 2024
JANUARY 25 @ 7 PM
Union Bldg, Wagner Campus
Launch of our Holocaust Education and Action Gallery
The Importance of a Holocaust Center on a College Campus
Join us in celebrating the launch of our Gallery and our 10th Anniversary with song, interfaith dialogue, upstander award and refreshments. Tours available on request
$ 18 donation requested.
__________________________________________________________________________
FEBRUARY 12 @ 7
Manzulli Hall
https://wagner.zoom.us/j/91812854308?pwd=V3ZQeGMyRnErZCt6OGttNC8zQnFyZz09
Cosponsored by the History Department
Jewish Refugee Scholars at Black Colleges
Dr. Lillie Johnson Edwards, former founding Director of Pan-African Studies and as Director of American Studies at Drew University presents a talk based on the late Gabrielle Simon Edgcomb’s book, From Swastika to Jim Crow (1993), and the documentary film of the same title, directed by Lori Cheatle and Martin Toub (2000). Her presentation will tell the story of the Jewish refugee scholars who fled Nazi Germany and found positions at historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) in the American South. The story connects racial segregation, violence, and anti-Semitism in the U.S. and Europe to African American agency, ambition, and leadership at HBCUs.
Dr. Edwards served as the founding Director of Pan-African Studies and as Director of American Studies at Drew University in Madison, NJ before retiring in 2016. While at Drew, she received awards for university faculty service and for excellent and distinguished teaching in the College of Liberal Arts and the Caspersen School of Graduate Studies. Prior to working at Drew, she taught at DePaul University (Chicago, IL), UNC-Chapel Hill (Chapel Hill, NC), and Earlham College (Richmond, IN).As a public intellectual committed to bringing African American studies to adult audiences, Dr. Edwards lectures and consults with corporations, libraries and archives, historical societies and museums, faith-based communities, and school districts.
____________________________________________________________________
March 6@ 6PM for International Woman’s Day
co-sponsored by the Museum of History and Holocaust Education at Kennesaw State University
Josephine Baker: Icon and Image
_____________________________________________________________________
MARCH 13 @ 4:30 PM
Banned Music: Works by Pavel Haas, Erich Korngold,
Luigi Dallapiccola, Darius Milhaud and Paul Hindemith
Lecture and performance by Itay Goren, concert pianist and author.
_________________________________________________________________
MARCH 14 TO JUNE 1
Love and Light: An Exhibit of Altered Books against
Antisemitism at the Staten Island Museum, with artist Caryn Davis and co-sponsored with Kulanu.
_____________________________________________________
MARCH 18 @ 11 AM
Zoom talk by Holocaust survivor and author Estelle Laughlin
Kingsborough Community College
zoom link and register in advance: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZErdOutqD4tHdLInP9oEiLVKvSrolNEfzqk
_________________________________________________________________________
APRIL 18@ 10 AM
RISE-UP: YOUNG HOLOCAUST HEROES, DIRECTED BY MICKEY TENNENBAUM
ST. GEORGE THEATER, STATEN ISLAND
The 3rd annual Youth Holocaust Remembrance for Yom Ha’Shoah, St. George Theater. Created in conjunction with Wagner College’s Holocaust Center, “Rise Up” tells the stories of six Holocaust survivors as they recall their happier days before the war and life in ghettos and camps with songs and words drawn from actual testimony. Explore how youth resisted the Nazis from forging ration cards to smuggling guns into the Warsaw Ghetto and why it matters today. Audience members will have a chance to meet a local Staten Island Holocaust survivor and ask questions of the cast after the performance.For grades 4-8
_________________________________________________________
MAY 20: 80TH ANNIVERSARY OF D-DAY
NORMANDY AND PARIS FRANCE
Wagner College Choir Performs at the American Cemetery in Normandy and at Chartres Cathedral, France, and visits the Paris Holocaust Memorial. Tour overseas open to the public (contact holocaust.center@wagner.edu, In addition, all public schools are encouraged to consider this theme of D-Day for our annual art and poetry contest.
___________________________________________________
June 2 @ 1 PM
Jewish Heritage Day, Ferry Stadium, S.I.
_______________________________________________________
June 6, 5:00 PM
WCHC International Summer Conference: Legal Issues in the Holocaust
and Genocide
Wagner College Campus
Join us as Holocaust scholars and legal experts discuss and share their research on the law and genocide in Germany, Bosnia and other regions around the world. Keynote speaker Dr. Wolf Gruner, Director, USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Holocaust Research and Shapell- Guerin Chair in Jewish Studies, University of Southern California. Featured speakers include Dr. Alma Begicevic, Professor, Loyola University, Chicago, former representative to the United Nations Mission in Kosovo and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe on behalf of the US, Dr. Sarah Danielsson, Professor of History, CUNY Grad Center and Associate Editor of the Journal of Genocide Research and Fay Parris, Esq. International Law Consultant, Co-Chair of the Women’s Bar Association of the State of New York ), International Women’s Rights Committee and as an Ex-Officio Director of the Executive Committee of NGOs in association with the United Nations Department of Public Information (UNNGO/DPI),Talks followed by a round table featuring legal scholars and attorneys. Luncheon.
Conference organized by Professor Laura Morowitz and Professor Lori Weintrob. Advising Committee Chair:Stephen R. Greenwald, Esq., Member and former President of the American Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists
check back for further information.
EVENTS: FALL 2023
___________________________________________________________________________________
SEPTEMBER 19@ 4:30 PM/ EXHIBITION CONTINUES THROUGH FALL
The Sara and Sam Schoffer Holocaust Resource Center, Stockton University
exhibition website: https://holocaustcenter.commons.gc.cuny.edu/exhibit-racism-and-white-supremacism-in-the-united-states/
Within and Beyond Exclusionary Communities: White Supremacy and Racism in the United States
Dr. Elke Weesjes Sabella, Director of the Kingsborough Community College Holocaust Center and photojournalist Anthony Karen lead a discussion at the opening of their exhibition, which is generously funded by Holocaust survivor Leo S. Ullman. The exhibition introduces visitors to several white supremacist groups in the United States and examines the lives and experiences of ordinary individuals who join (and sometimes leave) these groups. The exhibit seeks to understand what is it about their lives that seems to coincide with racist politics, and how they pass on their ideology to subsequent generations. The exhibit is part of a project by historian Dr. Elke Weesjes, titled Children of the (White Collar) Klan: Growing up in the American Far Right, 1960-1990, which was funded by Mellon/ACLS. The exhibit presents photos and captions by Anthony Karen, who has more than twenty years of experience photographing far-right extremist groups in the United States.
The exhibit will be on display through the Fall semester. It is free and open to the public, but individual and group visits require registration. To coordinate a visit, please contact 609-652-4699 or https://stockton.edu/holocaust-resource/
_____________________________________________________________________________
OCTOBER 3@ 2:30
University of Massachusetts at Amherst
zoom link: coming soon
Art as Witness: Works of Art Made During the Holocaust
Dr. Laura Morowitz, Professor of Art History at Wagner College and the Senior Research and Programming Associate of the Wagner College Holocaust Center guest lectures in the classroom of Dr. Jonathan Skolnick, Professor of German, University of Massachusetts at Amherst in his course on Representing the Holocaust. Works of visual art made by those who experienced the Holocaust serve as testimony, lifeline and as acts of resistance. Victims and survivors created works of art in hiding, ghettos, labor and concentration camps, and under every conceivable circumstance. This talk looks at some of the themes, subjects and functions of these works, from anonymous sketches to images by David Olère, Esther Lurie and Felix Nussbaum.
______________________________________________________________________
OCTOBER 16 @ 1:30 zoom link:https://wagner.zoom.us/j/97996257472?pwd=ZU14STZsSExQU1h1Zk96SWpmR05pUT09
Art Produced by Women Prisoners in Auschwitz
Join the classroom of Dr. Laura Morowitz, Ah 310: Art and Aesthetics in the Third Reich as we host a guest lecture by Professor Bozena Karwowska, Professor, Department of Central, Eastern and Northern European Studies and Chair of Modern European Studies, the University of British Columbia. 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. 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.
_________________________________________________________________
OCTOBER 17@ 1 PM
Manzulli Board Room, Foundation Hall
Zoom link:https://wagner.zoom.us/j/97372649879?pwd=VTFHRjdRaE1zSm1sMkhqVHdBQ0pBdz09
co-sponsored by the Wagner College Department of Anthropology
Rescue in Rwanda
In this lecture 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 and award-winning author of Genocides Lives in Us: Women, Memory & Silence in Rwanda presents research from her new book, To Save Heaven and Earth: Rescue in the Rwandan Genocide, Cornell University Press, 2o23.In this lecture, Professor Burnet considers people who risked their lives in the 1994 Rwandan genocide of Tutsi to try and save those targeted for killing. Many genocide perpetrators were not motivated by political ideology, ethnic hatred, or prejudice. In the face of mass violence, ordinary people faced complex choices in an uncertain context. Dr. Burnet will present stories of heroism and of the good done amid the evil of a genocide that nearly annihilated Rwandan Tutsi and decimated the Hutu and Twa who were opposed to the slaughter.
Following Dr. Burnett, we will hear a presentation by Providence Umugwaneza, Survivor of the Genocide against the Tutsi, and Author of Next Couple Hours, which recounts her experience during the genocide. Provie is a speaker, author, and advocate who was 11 years old when she survived the 1994 Genocide perpetrated against the Tutsis in Rwanda that claimed more than a million innocent lives. Provie worked at the Kigali Genocide Memorial and went on to found the “Kabeho Neza Initiative,” a nonprofit organization that raises awareness of the Genocide against the Tutsis and fights denial in all its forms. She advocates for women who contracted HIV/AIDS as a result of sexual assault during the Genocide against the Tutsis. She is the youngest person ever to be appointed to serve on the Texas Holocaust, Genocide, and Antisemitism Advisory Commission.
____________________________________________________________________
OCTOBER 23 @ 2 PM 
DAFFODIL PLANTING IN MANDELA LEADERSHIP GARDEN
Join us to plant daffodils in honor of children suffering in war and humanitarian crises today in the Nelson Mandela Leadership Garden. Located between Foundation Hall and Parker Hall, it will be next to the International Peace Pole, a Wagner College 2005 Senior Class gift of hope after the terrorist attacks of 9/11/2001. The Daffodil Project is an effort to raise awareness of the 1.5 million Jewish children who died in the Holocaust. There are almost 500 memorial gardens including this new one at Wagner College, through the efforts of the Wagner College Holocaust Center Advisory Committee. All are welcome to plant bulbs with us. Special thanks to Dan Switzer and the facilities team for their support. Email any questions to: holocaust.center@wagner.edu.
NOVEMBER 15 @ 11:30 PM
Staten Island Museum
SPECIAL EVENT, LOVE AND LIGHT: THE ALTERED BOOK PROJECT
The Altered Book Project, lead by Caryn Davis is a mixed-media program that’s designed to teach participants how to incorporate both recycled and new materials, personal photographs and much more into their books using simple techniques. Participants in Wagner College’s Holocaust course will transform their books into personal treasures focused on Jewish history with the goal of combating anti-semitism. In addition, there will be four public sessions at the St. George library (Thursdays, October 19 and 26 from 3pm to 6pm Saturdays, October 28 and November 4 from 1pm to 4pm) to make altered books with WCHC intern’s participation.
________________________________________________
OCTOBER 26 @ 2:40
zoom talk:https://wagner.zoom.us/j/91536637791?pwd=K3N3WEVWczRyZFRGYVpDc2xFSHArQT09
co-sponsored by the Academic and Cultural Enrichment Program
Humor Returns? Jewish Comedians in Postwar Vienna
Dr. Frances Tanzer, the Rose Professor of Jewish Culture and Holocaust Studies at Clark University’s Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies joins the classroom of Professors Laura Morowitz and Katica Urbanc, RFT 8: Artists and Writers in Exile. Professor Tanzer’s talk will examine the performances and fraught experiences of Jewish humorists as they returned to Vienna after 1945. Humorists returned in slightly higher concentrations than other professional groups and were frequently greeted by adoring fans when they arrived in Austria. Such encounters defy received wisdom: Why were cabaret artists met by such ecstatic, unrestrained praise when most Viennese Jews, including prominent figures like Arnold Schönberg, encountered a hostile population and seemingly endless hurdles if they dared imagine a future in the Second Republic? The fate of cabaret performers reveals the surprising symbolic significance of Jewish artists to Vienna’s cultural reconstruction after the Holocaust. Dr. Tanzer has received fellowships from the Center for Jewish History, the German Historical Institute, the Getty Institute, the Cogut Institute for the Humanities, the Botstiber Institute for Austrian-American Studies, and the Central European History Society, among others. In June of 2024 her book, Vanishing Vienna: Modernism, Philosemitism, and Jews in a Postwar City will be published by the University of Pennsylvania Press.
___________________________________________________
NOVEMBER 1 @ 1:30
Kingsborough Community College Holocaust Center
zoom link and registration:https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZItdumurDIpG9BS0tj9XnnLAbKaMiTtx6hA#/registration
Art, Exhibition and Erasure in Nazi Vienna
Dr. Elke Sabella Weesjes, Research and Programming Director of the KCC Holocaust Center invites Dr. Laura Morowitz, Professor of Art History at Wagner College and Senior Research and Programming Director of the Wagner College Holocaust Center to discuss her newly published book, Art, Exhibition and Erasure in Nazi Vienna (Routledge 2023). Her book examines three exhibitions of contemporary art held at the Vienna Künstlerhaus during the period of National Socialist rule and shows how each attempted to culturally erase elements vilified in Nazi ideology: the City, the Jewess and fin-de-siècle Vienna. Each of the exhibits was large scale and ambitious, part of a broader attempt to situate Vienna as the cultural capital of the Reich, and each aimed to reshape cultural memory and rewrite history.
_________________________________________________________________________
NOVEMBER 2 @ 1:00-2:15
HOLOCAUST AND INTERFAITH PROGRAM
Foundation Hall, Wagner College Campus
_____________________________________________________________________________________
NOVEMBER 14 @ 10:30-12:30
EGON J. SALMON AND FAMILY COMMEMORATION OF KRISTALLNACHT AND
THE ST. LOUIS
In Partnership with NYC Department of Education, District 31
at the Museum of Jewish Heritage, 36 Battery Place, Manhattan
The District 31 High School Borough Student Advisory Committee (B-SAC), encompassing 180 students
representing all eleven High Schools on Staten Island, will join the Salmon Family to tour the exhibit “What Hate Can
Do” and the new exhibit “Courage to Act: Rescue in Denmark.” This event honors Egon J. Salmon
(1924-2022), who came to Staten Island as a German-Jewish refugee after being refused entry due to
strict U.S. Immigration Laws. He later served the U.S. Army in World War II.
____________________________________________________________________
NOVEMBER 29 @ 11:30 AM:
co-sponsored by the Dr. Esther Grushkin Center for Arts and Culture and the Joan and Allen Bernikow Jewish Community Center of Staten Isand
ZOOM LINK: https://wagner.zoom.us/j/96059661105?pwd=NHI2VkhVOFdaaS80VmQzYVo1ci9OZz09
PAST EVENTS:
SUMMER 2023:
WATCH OUR FULL SUMMER CONFERENCE ON HEROINES OF THE HOLOCAUST: NURSES AND DOCTORS AND RESCUERS AND RESISTERS IN THE HOLOCAUST AND OTHER GENOCIDE (SEE FULL PROGRAM BELOW)
EVENTS: SPRING 2023:
JANUARY 29 @ 2PM
cosponsored with the Ghetto Fighters House, Israel
Sexual Violence against Jewish Women during the Holocaust: Challenges and Reflections
Join us for a live zoom screening of the event, WCHC Education and Action Gallery, Room 201, Union Building, Wagner College Campus, 1 Campus Road, Staten Island, NY
zoomlink: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZ0tce6gpzsiGN0-7ubxCOHu13VVNVsPXKaO
Dr. Sonja M. Hedgepeth and Dr. Rochelle G. Saidel, editors, discuss their 2010 groundbreaking book on the subject of sexual violence against Jewish women during the Holocaust. They pay tribute to early researchers on the subject and reflect on the continued challenges for scholars. Including this subject in Holocaust history provides a fuller understanding of what many women endured. Opening remarks by Dr. Sharon Geva.
This program is in partnership with the Remember the Women Institute, Women in the Holocaust – International Study Center (MORESHET), Wagner College Holocaust Center, Classrooms Without Borders, Rabin Chair Forum Washington University, and the Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Center
_________________________________________________________
co-sponsored with the Institute for the Study of War and Democracy, The National World War II Museum.
Art, Atrocity, and Representation: The Visual Arts Under the Third Reich
Webinar.htthttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsDBBXddJdw
Join host Dr. Jason Dawsey, Research Historian, Institute for the Study of War and Democracy, The National World War II Museum, and Dr. Laura Morowitz, Professor of Art History at Wagner College and the Senior Programming and Research Associate at the Wagner College Holocaust Center as she discusses and answers questions on topics such as the Nazi policy toward the arts, the link between Nazi art and ideology, and the work of anti-Nazi artists as well as artists who perished in the Holocaust.
_______________________________________________________________
FEBRUARY 19 @ 2
cosponsored with the Ghetto Fighters House, Israel
Birth, Sex and Violence: Women’s Voices Under Nazi Rule
Dr. Beverly Chambers
Full description and zoom link to follow
____________________________________________________________
FEBRUARY 21 @ 6
AUSTRIA AND THE COLD WAR
Manzulli Board Room, Foundation Hall
zoom:https://wagner.zoom.us/s/93108940387?pwd=NTRHOG02ai8zSTBCbUpLeUdRUGVoZz09#success
Although Austria was annexed into the Third Reich and contributed some of the most notorious Nazi criminals, the country was treated very differently than Germany by the Allies. Dr. Guenter Bischof, Marshall Plan Chair of History at the University of New Orleans and winner of the European Academy of Sciences 1st Class Award will present research from his 2022 publication on Austria and the Cold War: A Balance Between East and West (Leykam Press). The Cold War kept the world in suspense for almost half a century. When the Iron Curtain descended over Europe, Austria was also in danger of division. The victorious powers of the Second World War, which had liberated Austria from Nazism, were preparing for a prolonged occupation of the country. Austria was a major theater of the East-West conflict and thus also a stomping ground for the secret services. The propaganda war in the country also raged between East and West. Dr. Bischof, author of numerous books on 20th Century Austrian History and hundreds of articles and chapters shares his incomparable knowledge on the subject.
___________________________________________________________________
FEBRUARY 22@ 12 PM
cosponsored with the Kupferberg Holocaust Center
Surviving the Taliban Takeover in Afghanistan: Sohaila Kakar’s Refugee Journey
Virtual Event. Click here to register: https://tinyurl.com/3zc83bsh
In Afghanistan, Sohaila Kakar was a practicing surgeon; then, in 2021, the Taliban took over the country. Join the Kupferberg Holocaust Center as Sohaila discusses life before and after the Taliban’s takeover in Afghanistan–and the physical, economic, and psychological toll it had upon her family as they fled. Her story also highlights the compassionate work done by Upwardly Global, the non-profit agency that provided guidance to Sohaila’s family as they settled in the U.S.
_________________________________________________
MARCH 8 @ 7
IN HONOR OF INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY
Concerned and Courageous: Teachers and Social Workers as Heroines of the Holocaust
zoom: https://wagner.zoom.us/j/99063387331?pwd=ajd6dHZwRmN0dzczZSswQXR5Qy9pUT09
During the era of the Third Reich, participation in social welfare-oriented professions led hundreds of thousands of women into direct contact with the Holocaust. Join Katy Matello ,Education Coordinator at the Museum of History and Holocaust Education at Kennesaw State University, Georgia, as she presents research focused on how female teachers and social workers resisted Nazi atrocities in Germany and occupied Poland. She highlights the ascendency of these women to rescuers during the Holocaust as an extension of their professions, focusing on how their occupational skills and resources were utilized to resist Nazi oppression.
_________________________________________________________
MARCH 10- APRIL 10
EXHIBIT IN SPOTLIGHT GALLERY HORMANN LIBRARY: Routes of Disappearance. Jewish and Roma Memory of Transnistria
With a special talk on MARCH 14 by exhibition researcher and co-creator, Dr. Hanna Abakunova, Upsala University, Sweden.
On zoom only due to weather.
zoom link
https://wagner.zoom.us/j/99298927406? pwd=ZjVxNTNqRW8vaDJtbUhUbVZvN2plQT09
An exhibition in our Spotlight Gallery and a talk by Dr. Abakunova about the Holocaust in Transnistria – the territory under Romanian control. The exhibition is based on interviews which she and her colleagues from Ukraine and Poland collected in Ukraine, Moldova, and Israel in 2010-11. She organized and presented the exhibition in Ukraine, Moldova, Russia, Sweden, the Czech Republic and the last time at Howard Community College (Maryland, the USA) in 2018.
___________________________________________________________________
March 12@ 2:00
cosponsored with the Ghetto Fighters House, Israel
BETRAYED: CHILD SEX ABUSE AND THE HOLOCAUST
Dr. Beverly Chambers
Full description and zoom link to follow
______________________________________________________________
Monday March 13@ 12:30
WOMEN IN THE GHETTOS
Women’s experiences in Nazi ghettos in Eastern Europe during the Second World War will be presented by Professor Dalia Ofer, who will speak about daily life of Jewish women in ghettos in Poland; Professor Lori Weintrob, who will tell stories of ghetto heroines; Professor Sara Horowitz, who studies the representation of women in ghettos in literature; and Dr. Batya Brutin, who will show art about and by women in the ghettos.
MARCH 26@2
cosponsored with the Ghetto Fighters House, Israel
VICTIMIZATION OF JEWISH WOMEN SURVIVORS BY THEIR SOVIET LIBERATORS
Dr. Daina S. Eglitis
Full description and zoom link to follow
______________________________________________
APRIL 17@ 7 PM
YOM HA’SHOAH v’ HA’GEVURAH PROGRAM
SISTERS IN SURVIVAL: FEMALE SOLIDARITY IN THE GHETTOS and CONCENTRATION CAMPS
Manzulli Board Room, Foundation Hall
zoom:
Join us for a very special Yom Ha’Shoah v’Ha’Gevurah (Holocaust Remembrance and Heroism Day) program as we commemorate two remarkable women who survived the concentration camps through the love and care of female relatives. Ram Roth will speak about his mother, Rachel (Ruchama) Roth, who endured the Warsaw ghetto and uprising, Majdanek, Auschwitz and Bergen Belsen alongside her Aunt Hela, as described in her memoir Here There Is No Why. Fern Zagor will remember her mother, Frieda (Wakschlag) Aaron, who survived the Warsaw Ghetto, Majdanek and two other concentration camps with her mother and sister Estelle, as described in Estelle’s memoire, Transcending Darkness: A Girl’s Journey Out of the Holocaust and Frieda’s scholarly text Bearing the Unbearable: Yiddish and Polish Poetry in the Ghettos and Concentrations Camps. Scholar Daan de Leeuw will present his research on Dutch and Polish women in the camps, “From Circle of Care to Enduring Enmity: Jewish Women in the Lublin-Majdanek Camp System.”
APRIL 18 @ 10 AM
RISE UP: YOUNG HOLOCAUST HEROES. ST. GEORGE THEATER
Created in conjunction with Wagner College’s Holocaust Center, and directed by Mickey Tennenbaum, “Rise Up” tells the stories of six Holocaust survivors as they recall their happier days before the war and life in ghettos and camps with songs and words drawn from actual testimony. Explore how youth resisted the Nazis from forging ration cards to smuggling guns into the Warsaw Ghetto and why it matters today. Audience members will have a chance to meet a local Staten Island Holocaust survivor and ask questions of the cast after the performance.
For grades 4-8
THEMES: Holocaust Awareness, History, Social Studies
______________________________
APRIL 18@ 7:30 PM
From Romania to Auschwitz to New York: The Hecht Family
_________________________________________
APRIL 19 @ 1
Holocaust Remembrance-Women and Resistance in the Holocaust
APRIL 27 @ 4
Interfaith Tour of the Wagner College Holocaust Center for community leaders, led by Dr. Lori Weintrob and Wagner College interns.
A panel with community and student leaders will follow in the Faculty Dining Room, Union, for the closing event of Staten Island Community Days. Honorees who “Lead by Example” will be announced.
2023 Honorees: Mendy Mirocznik, President COJO; Aur Torah Sephardic Minyan; Bari’s Pizza Pasta (Krenar and Skelzen Fazlija); Zara Cafe and Grill (Ramazan Avci); Hassan 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.
____________________________________
EVENTS: FALL 2022:
SEPTEMBER 28 @ 12PM
cosponsored with Kupferberg Holocaust Center
The Digitization of Genocide Memory: Consequences and Contestation
Join us as Dr. David J. Simon, Director of the Genocide Studies Program at Yale University discusses the memorialization of mass atrocities and genocide across a vast array of digital technologies, including both academic settings and unexpected virtual spaces like Minecraft, YouTube, and TikTok. What are the opportunities for remembrance that are made possible in these spaces? And what are the potential hazards of memorializing mass atrocities and genocide in them? This event is part of the 2022-23 Harriet & Kenneth Kupferberg Holocaust Center (KHC) and National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Colloquium, “Trauma, Remembrance, and Compassion.” The event is organized by the (KHC) at Queensborough Community College and co-sponsored by the Kupferberg Center and Wagner College
click here to register:https://tinyurl.com/mwz7rrjf
________________________________________________
October 6@ 4:30 PM, Room TBA
cosponsored with the Wagner Civic Engagement Program
zoom link:https://wagner.zoom.us/j/91290744582?pwd=NnUzVkVONzJMY3JYTXBISTFNWU5TQT09
The Rise of Authoritarianism in the European Union
R. Daniel Kelemen is Professor of Political Science and Law and Chair of the Department of Political Science at Rutgers University. He is also an adjunct Professor of European Union Law at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School. While the European Union (EU) was founded to be a union of democracies, in recent years it has allowed some member state governments – most notably in Hungary and Poland – to backslide toward authoritarianism by attacking judicial independence, press freedom, and other fundamental democratic values. Now the EU has become stuck in an “autocracy trap”, in which autocratic governments can undermine the EU from within. Why did these regimes emerge? Why have Europe’s leaders failed to stand up to them? And what lessons may this hold for the United States? Professor Kelemen will discuss these questions and more in his public lecture. Kelemen’s research focuses on the politics of the European Union, law and politics, comparative political economy, and comparative public policy. His 2011 book Eurolegalism: The Transformation of Law and Regulation in the European Union (Harvard University Press) won the Best Book Award from the European Union Studies Association
_________________________________________________
October 17 @ 6 PM Manzulli, Foundation Hall
cosponsored with the Wagner Civic Engagement Program
https://wagner.zoom.us/j/95499883842?pwd=RFZCQ0daVUZLZDVlV25HZit5aWtEdz09
My Father the Klansman: Growing up in the American Far Right
If no one is born a racist, how are they made? This question is central to the oral history project Dr. Elke Weesjes, Research and Programming Director of the Kingsborough Holocaust Center and a visiting assistant professor at Kingsborough Community College (CUNY), is currently working on. Based on a series of interviews with 15 children of Ku Klux Klan members (born between 1945 and 1975), auto/biographies, archival materials, and existing Ku Klux Klan historiography, her project explores what it was like to grow up on the political fringes of American society in the latter part of the 20th century. In her paper, “My Father the Klansman”, Weesjes examines the lives of two of her respondents. Both renounced their upbringing and left their family and community behind to start a life without racism and antisemitism. She will discuss their childhood experiences growing up in a KKK family, their fraught relationships with their parents, the contrast between the hateful ideology passed down by their parents at home and the moral values taught in school, the extent of social isolation experienced during their childhood, what prompted them to break with their family and community, and how they have fared since then. Her paper ultimately shows how children navigated and negotiated the differences between their home lives and public lives and developed their own views on race and sense of identity.
___________________________________________________________________
October 18@ 7 PM, CASA BELVEDERI
Liliana Segre: An Italian Story of the Holocaust
OCTOBER 24 @ 7 PM
Studying Zionism and Israel in the PLO
Dr. Jonathan Gribetz, Associate Professor, Department of Near Eastern Studies, Princeton University teaches about the history of Zionism, Palestine, Israel, Jerusalem, and nationalism in the modern Middle East. The Palestine Liberation Organization, founded in 1964, became famous, or infamous, over the decades primarily for its militants and its politicians. There was another group in the organization, however, that was less well known but no less important: PLO researchers. In 1965, the PLO established a Research Center in Beirut dedicated to carefully analyzing what it referred to as “the Palestine Problem,” a crucial element of which was “knowing the enemy.” This meant researching the Jews, Judaism, Zionism, and Israel. In this lecture, Professor Jonathan Gribetz will introduce us to the PLO Research Center, upon which he is currently completing a new book, and discuss the importance of this group of activist researchers and intellectuals on the history of the PLO. His first book, Defining Neighbors: Religion, Race, and the Early Zionist-Arab Encounter (Princeton University Press, 2014), investigated the mutual perceptions of Zionists and Arabs in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, showing the prominent place of religious and racial categories in the ways in which these communities imagined and related to one another. Defining Neighbors was named a Choice Outstanding Academic Title in 2015. Gribetz is currently writing a book on the Palestine Liberation Organization Research Center. For the new book, tentatively titled Reading Herzl in Beirut: The PLO’s Research on Judaism and Israel (under contract with Princeton University Press), Gribetz has been awarded a Fulbright Scholarship and a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
_________________________________________________
NOVEMBER 10 @ 7 PM
7th annual Egon J. Salmon and Family Commemoration of Kristallnacht and the St Louis
Honoring the Past: The Voices of 2G survivors
___________________________________________________
NOVEMBER 17 @ 1:30 PM via zoom
Discussion and Analysis of Krzysztof Kieślowski, Dekalog 8: Thou Shalt not Bear False Witness Against Thy Neighbor
https://wagner.zoom.us/j/98856608620?pwd=dWhiUGxNUTYvQ1djMlBmMm1GMmFSUT09
Join the classroom of Drs. Laura Morowitz and Katica Urbanc for a discussion of part 8 of the brilliant series on the Dekalog (1988) directed by Polish artist Krzysztof Kieślowski. Film expert and 2022 winner of the best book award at the Polish Film Institute, Professor Mikołaj Jazdon, Institute of Film, Media and Audiovisual Arts, Adam Mickiewicz University, will speak about the film, which deals with moral issues around the saving of Jews during the Holocaust. An elderly female university professor of ethics is introduced to an American academic who is researching the fate of Jews after WW2. Sitting in on the professor’s lectures, the American offers a story – which has personal significance both for her and the professor – for the students to analyse. A Jewish child, during the Nazi occupation of Warsaw, is offered sanctuary on condition that she obtain a certificate of baptism. The Catholic couple who have promised to help refuse on the grounds that they will not bear false witness, thus condemning the child to almost certain death. But as the film unfolds we learn more about the child and her connections to the characters in the film.
The film will not be shown and should be watched ahead of the talk.
_________________________________________________________
NOVEMBER 29@ 7 PM
Laughing Off The Trauma of Jewish History: Humor and Antisemitism
Dr. Avinoam Patt, Doris and Simon Konover Chair of Judaic Studies and Director, Center for Judaic Studies and Contemporary Jewish Life at University of Connecticut presents this talk on his research.
Why the Bicycle Riders? Why The Jews? It has been commonly remarked that among the defining features of Jewish humor is the tendency to laugh at the Jewish self. As a people with a long history of persecution, Jews have neutralized the hostility of the outside world, first by internalizing it and then by detonating it through a joke. Jews have also used humor as a weapon against the powerful and as a coping mechanism to deal with persecution and trauma. In this talk, Prof. Patt will examine the many functions of Jewish humor as a response to antisemitism and the Holocaust, and ask whether the Jewish tradition of responding to persecution with punchlines can still be effective today.
_____________________________________________________
DECEMBER DATE TBA
co-sponsored with the Institute for the Study of War and Democracy, The National World War II Museum.
Art, Atrocity, and Representation: The Visual Arts Under the Third Reich
Webinar. Link to follow.
Join host Dr. Jason Dawsey, Research Historian, Institute for the Study of War and Democracy, The National World War II Museum, and Dr. Laura Morowitz, Professor of Art History at Wagner College and the Senior Programming and Research Associate at the Wagner College Holocaust Center as she discusses and answers questions on topics such as the Nazi policy toward the arts, the theft of artwork from Jewish families, and the work of anti-Nazi artists as well as artists who perished in the Holocaust.
_______________________________________________________________
——————————————————
PAST EVENTS: SPRING 2022
JANUARY 25, @7 PM: (in person or zoom):
Italian Cultural Foundation at Casa Belvedere in partnership with the WCHC Screening of “Our Hebrews” and Q&A live from Tel Aviv with the director to commemorate International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
In southern Tuscany, locals refer to their town as ‘Little Jerusalem,’ because of its striking resemblance to Israel’s ancient city. Through the medieval stone walls, the fascinating story of co-existence between Jews and Christians since the 15th century unfolds, leading to the heroic acts done by the locals during the time of the Holocaust. Naor Meninghe is an award-winning filmmaker and content creator of podcasts and vlogs. He graduated from Steve Tisch Film School at Tel Aviv University, after three years as a military filmmaker in the Israeli Defense Forces. His short films The Rat’s Dilemma (2014), An Old Score (2016) and Our Hebrews (2016) were screened in many film festivals. Proof of vaccination is required for all guests at Casa Belvedere, 79 Howard Avenue.
Watch the trailer here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfpJgAW8ER8
__________________________________________
JANUARY 27 @ 6PM: INTERNATIONAL HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE DAY via zoom
Virtual Commemoration From Awareness to Action:
Confronting Antisemitism At Home and Abroad
Join Dr. Robert Williams for a discussion about how current conspiracy theories and tropes fuel antisemitism domestically and internationally. Deputy Director for International Affairs at the U.S.Holocaust Memorial Museum, Williams will also address how and why Holocaust education is one of many ways to combat it. This event is organized by the Harriet & Kenneth Kupferberg Holocaust Center at Queensborough Community College and is co-sponsored by the Wagner College Holocaust Center and several other Holocaust organizations.
Please register here for zoom: https://tinyurl.com/4f4yp6wx
__________________________________________
FEBRUARY 10 2022@ 1:00 PM
IGNORANCE, ABUSE AND COMPETITION IN THE POLITICS OF HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE
DR. DIRK RUPNOW, PROFESSOR AT THE INSTITUTE OF CONTEMPORARY HISTORY AND DEAN OF THE FACULTY OF PHILOSOPHY AND HISTORY, UNIVERSITY OF INNSBRUCK
After a period of globalization and institutionalization, Holocaust remembrance appears to be subject to profound changes. This talk attempts to outline the status and the present challenges in European, “Western” and global contexts. It will raise questions about the meaning of Holocaust remembrance in the increasingly divers European “migration societies”, not the least during a moment of a perceived refugee crises in Europe, as well as evident Racism and ever growing Islamophobia; and at the same time, the global “competition” between memory of the Holocaust and the crimes of European colonial powers, as well as their relative place in European memory. These are not new questions, but ones that are increasingly relevant and controversial.
register in advance: https://wagner.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJAuf-uorDgsGtIiXW1BUUh12hWewlShKu7A
_________________________________
FEBRUARY 22 @ 2pm, zoom
Remembering Resistance: Sophie Scholl and the White Rose
In 1943, Sophie Scholl and her brother Hans were arrested by the Gestapo after they distributed anti-Nazi leaflets to students at the University of Munich Sophie, Hans, and Christoph Probst, another member of the White Rose group, were executed on February 22, 1943. The program will feature a conversation between Frank McDonough, author of Sophie Scholl: The Real Story of the Woman Who Defied Hitler, and Nathan Stoltzfus, the Dorothy and Jonathan Rintels Professor of Holocaust Studies at Florida State University, moderated by Dr. Lori Weintrob, Wagner College Holocaust Center. A virtual screening of the Academy Award nominated film Sophie Scholl: The Final Days will be made available one week before the program.
Register here for this virtual
discussion, a program of the Museum of Jewish Heritage:
https://mjhnyc.org/events/remembering-resistance-sophie-scholl-and-the-white-rose/
_________________________________________
MARCH 6@ 1:00 PM
The Politics of a New Hannah Szenes Memorial
Dr. Andrea Pető is Professor in the Department of Gender Studies at Central European University, Vienna Austria and a Doctor of Science of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.
This talk focuses on the commemoration of Jewish and Hungarian heroine Hannah (Anikó) Szenes in Budapest, on the 100th anniversary of her birth. At twenty-three years old, Szenes parachuted into Yugoslavia in March 1944 where she was caught, tortured and executed.While her life story has been canonized in Israel, in her native land of Hungary she has largely been condemned to oblivion. The different circles of memory and forgetting around Szenes are made up of key elements of 20th century Hungarian, European and Israeli history, which intersected precisely in narrating Szenes’ life story. Dr.Pető will further shed light on the historical oblivion that so often befalls women who perform historical deeds.
Register in advance for this meeting:
https://wagner.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJAkc–prTMjGdOtWpEXW2-LVKxyArJbp2K7
_________________________________
March 8, 2022 @ 6pm, zoom
Telling the Story of Zionist Settlement Through Language
Liora Halperin is an Associate Professor of International Studies, History, and Jewish Studies, and the Jack and Rebecca Benaroya Endowed Chair in Israel Studies at the
University of Washington.
This talk will explore the history of Jewish agricultural settlement in Palestine/Israel through the lens of language. What happened when Yiddish speaking settlers purchased land from Arabic speaking owners with the help of Ladino-speaking (Judeao-Spanish) intermediaries in an Ottoman Turkish context? How did they relate to the Arabic-speaking workers the first of them hired? How did the story change as more of them started speaking Hebrew in a context of English control after World War I, after Zionist forces displaced most Arabic speaking Palestinians in 1948 and after Israel occupied many of them again in 1967? How did older settlers confront and content with Jewish newcomers speaking Polish, German, Arabic, and many other languages? Why did the stakes of speaking one language or another feel so consequential? How do we think about the role of language amidst shifting power relations, economic hierarchies, and nationalist
movements?
Register in advance for this meeting:
https://wagner.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJMkd-qsqDwuH9R_Pa0Seyp0pQpG1PawM2eg
_____________________________________
MARCH 17 2022@ 7PM, zoom
Presented at the Kingsborough-Manhattan Beach Holocaust Memorial Center
Capturing the Unspeakable: Art as a Tool for Learning about the Holocaust
Dr. Laura Morowitz is Professor of Art History at Wagner College and the Senior Research and Programming Assistant at the Wagner College Holocaust Center
Over 30,000 works of art survived the Holocaust; they serve as eyewitness sources as well as enabling our subjective and emotional understanding. In this talk, Professor Laura Morowitz explores works of art created in hiding, ghettos and concentration camps, revealing how they can serve as a unique tool in teaching and learning about the Holocaust. In contrast to sources that may attempt to convey the overwhelming nature of mass murder, works of art testify to individuality, the richness of an individual consciousness, and thus bring home the tragic loss of a single, unique human being.
Registration in advance:
_____________________________________________
April 7, 7pm, in-person:
Opening Reception for the Education and Action Gallery of the Wagner College Holocaust Center
Please join us in celebrating the opening of the first Holocaust Center in Staten Island. Our Education and Action gallery includes a tribute wall to the Holocaust survivors of our borough. Our exhibition also highlights the role of resistors and rescuers, as well as American soldiers of all faiths in World War II. Elected officials, Holocaust survivors and their families, along with those who have helped to make this Gallery a reality, will be acknowledged.
To make a reservation, email: holocaust.center@wagner.edu
_________________________________________
April 14, 7pm, zoom
The Art of Survival: Friedl Dicker-Brandeis and Children’s Art at Theresienstadt
Dr. Megan Brandow-Faller is Professor of History at the City University of New York (CUNY)and teaches at the CUNY Graduate Center. She is a member of the Kingsborough Holocaust Advisory Board
Bauhaus-trained artist and designer Friedl Dicker-Brandeis (1898-1944) brought the philosophies of progressive art education to the NSDAP ghetto and concentration camp at Theresienstadt, teaching drawing to imprisoned children, mostly girls, to inspire hope and self-expression under the most adverse conditions. While most of “Friedl’s girls” ultimately perished, Dicker-Brandeis’s surviving students spoke of their teacher’s remarkable ability to create a nurturing atmosphere where students could express hopes, fears and dreams as a temporary release from the brutal ghetto around them. Examining Dicker-Brandeis’s intellectual influences in Secessionist Vienna and the Weimar Bauhaus, Dr. Brandow-Faller’s talk focuses on Dicker-Brandeis’s brief but heroic teaching and exhibition career in the children’s homes of Theresienstadt, where art became a means of humanistic, if not physical, survival for its youngest inhabitants.
This event is organized by the Kingsborough Holocaust Center and is cosponsored by the Wagner College Holocaust Center.
Register in advance for this Zoom meeting here.
_______________________________________
APRIL 28,7 PM IN HONOR OF YOM HASHOAH 2022 Holocaust Martyrs and Heroism Day
“Ordinary People” as Heroes for Hiding Jews in Nazi-Occupied
Holland: Leo Ullman as a hidden child and his
rescuers in Amsterdam during WWII.
Leo Ullman emigrated to the U.S. in 1947. He attended Harvard College (A.B.), served in the U.S. Marine Corps and, in only three years, earned degrees at Columbia University’s Graduate Schools of Law (J.D)and Business (M.B.A.). A member of the New York Bar, Ullman practiced law for more than 30 years. He established and took to the New York Stock Exchange a real estate investment trust in 2003, for which he was named Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year in the Financial Services area. He currently heads Vastgood Properties, a private real estate company. Mr. Ullman served as a Director and later Chairman of the Anne Frank Center, USA. He presently serves as Chairman of the Foundation for the Jewish Historical Museum in Amsterdam, Inc. and the Netherlands National Holocaust Museum. At the United States National Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., he and his wife, Kay (Katharine Lott Marbut), have co-sponsored at the exhibit “State of Deception: The Power of Nazi Propaganda.” They have also funded the creation of the “Schimmel and Hoogenboom Righteous Remembrance Room” at Stockton University’s Holocaust Resource Center. Ullman chronicled his experiences as a hidden child in the book, 796 Days: Hiding as a Child in Occupied Amsterdam in World War II, and in a recent film, There Were Good People…Doing Extraordinary Deeds.
Of the approximately 145,000 Jews in Holland before WWII, an estimated 25,000 Jewish men, women and children went into hiding in the Netherlands, including 3-1/2-year-old Leo Ullmann. What motivated rescuers of all faiths to act with inherent goodness and courage despite the enormous risk? Among nearly 6,000 rescuers were Pieter Hoogenboom, a policeman in Utrecht, and his wife Evertje, and Hendrik Schimmel, a retired policeman in Amsterdam, and his wife Jannigje. In the face of almost certain death, they helped provide hiding places, false identity papers and food, and enabled limited contacts among Ullmann family members in hiding in Amsterdam and elsewhere. In 2015, the rescuers of Leo and his family were recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations.
Our program with include Hebrew songs played on cello by Laura Melnicoff.
REGISTER IN ADVANCE:https://alumniconnect.wagner.edu/2022holocaustheroismday?erid=5683479&trid=0f8c4a53-19f1-4932-ba82-cb33edc35cc0 _______________________________________
May 16-June 20, 2022
Opening of Art Exhibit: Linda Stein’s Tapestry Series Fierce Females: Holocaust Heroes
We welcome you to visit our exhibit of original tapestries by artist Linda Stein, dedicated to heroines of the Holocaust
Heroic Tapestries represent different aspects of bravery during the time of the Holocaust: Jew and non-Jew, child and adult, World War II military fighter and ghetto/concentration camp smuggler, record keeper and saboteur. Together they represent the many types of female heroism, with war battle gear and without, during the years of the Holocaust.
The Holocaust Heroes project demonstrates that while most people are bystanders under conditions of terror, there are always a few who defy a malevolent authority and do what they feel is the right thing. If heroes existed during the Holocaust, then certainly we can increase the propensity for individuals to become more empathetic and compassionate under normal conditions.
This project is guided by an advisory group of art experts, Holocaust scholars, and individuals who are the offspring of Holocaust-impacted families, including political scientist Jerome Chanes, psychologist Eva Fogelman, healthcare expert Susanna Ginsburg, art educator Karen Keifer-Boyd, art historian and curator Gail Levin, museum director Jeanie Rosensaft, and Holocaust and human rights law professor Menachem Rosensaft. The editor of our exhibition catalog is Amy Stone and the producer of our short video and future documentary is Sarah Connors.
_________________________________________
May 2022 (date TBA)
Witness Theater: Staten Island Survivors
____________________________________________
May 25, 2022:
Chai Society Mitzvah Dinner
_____________________________________________
June 15-16, 2022:
International Symposium “Heroines of the Holocaust: New Frameworks of Resistance.”
Organized by Professors Laura Morowitz and Lori Weintrob, Wagner College
The activities of women during the Holocaust have often been forgotten, erased, misunderstood, or intentionally distorted. Jewish women and those of all faiths fought with dignity, compassion and courage to save others from the murderous Nazi regime in over 30 nations. Often overlooked, women as well as men played critical roles in uprisings against the Nazis in over 50 ghettos, 18 forced labor camps and 5 concentration camps, including Auschwitz. Women were critical to the Jewish underground and other resistance networks both as armed fighters and as strategists and couriers of intelligence and false papers. Women played essential roles operating educational, cultural and humanitarian initiatives. In other genocides, women also faced horrendous atrocities, yet distinguished themselves with resilience and acts of moral courage. This symposium hopes to create a new narrative around agency in the Shoah and other genocides, which may inspire transformative activism today.
For information on the symposium and to register please visit the website:
https://sites.google.com/wagner.edu/heroines
https://alumniconnect.wagner.edu/symposium2021
__________________________________________
PAST EVENTS FALL 2021
Photo: Liberation, 1945: Lore Baer (first row, middle) and her mother Edith,
along with her rescuer Cornelia Schouten (second row, 3rd from left) and her family and other helpers in the Netherlands.
Please join us for the 6th Annual Egon J. Salmon and Family Commemoration of Kristallnacht and the S.S. St. Louis
BEYOND ANNE FRANK: Hiding from the Nazis in the Netherlands
Lore Baer Azaria, Holocaust survivor and art therapist, whose experiences are featured in the 1997 children’s book: Hidden from the Nazis by David Adler (1997) and in the film Secret Lives: Hidden Children and their Rescuers during WWII (2003), directed by Avivia Slesin.
Wednesday, November 10, 2021 at 7:00 p.m. EST via Zoom
_________________________
Black Heroines of World War II
September 30, 11:30 a.m. via Zoom
As spies, nurses and clandestine couriers, Black women in France played vital, overlooked roles in the anti-Nazi war effort. Jane Vialle, an operative for Combat in Southern France, was arrested in 1943 for treason, but survived and became a Senator. Josephine Baker’s fight against Hitler’s Regime from Berlin to Lisbon has earned her a place in the Pantheon of French heroism.
Annette Joseph-Gabriel is Assistant Professor of French and Francophone Studies, University of Michigan and author, Reimagining Liberation: How Black Women Transformed Citizenship in the French Empire (University of Illinois Press, 2020). Introductory remarks by Virginia Allen, Staten Island’s “Black Angel” nurse.
Krakow Women and Resistance (Power of our Stories)
Sponsored by the New Cracow Friendship Society
October 17, 1:00 p.m.
An exploration of the voices and resistance activities of several notable Jewish women, including Gusta Dawidson Draenger, code name Justyna, with speaker Sheryl Ochayon, of Echoes and Reflections and Yad Vashem. Introducted and moderated by Lori Weintrob, Wagner College.
Israel Night: Media Bias (with Hillel of Wagner College)
October 5, 1:00 p.m.via Zoom and in-person
Join Wagner College Hillel as we host a guest speaker to help us discuss media biases concerning Israel and current Israeli affairs. This disucssion is bound to challenge all who attend and foster conversations for people of all religions, experiences, and backgrounds. All are welcome and encouraged to join for this powerful discussion. Several Wagner students will briefly present their own experiences in Israel.
Jews of Color Count
Wednesday, October 26. 6:00 p.m.
Co-sponsored with the Dr. Esther Grushkin Center for Arts + Culture, with Ms. Ginna Green, a political strategist, former Chief Strategy Officer at Bend the Arc: Jewish Action and a Fellow of the Kogod Research Center at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America. Green will share her vision of a vibrant, equitable, multiracial Jewish community.
More than Gold: Jesse Owens and the 1936 Olympic Games
October 31, 4:00 p.m.via Zoom
Sponsored by the Sousa Mendes Foundation, this event features Jesse Owen’s grandson, Scott Owen Rankin, executive director of the Jesse Owens Foundation, Dr. Lori Weintrob, Wagner College, and Anita L. DeFrantz, Vice President of the International Olympic Committee, moderated by Robert Jacobvitz. Register here: https://sousamendesfoundation.org/event/jesse-owens
Across the Pyrenees: Helping Jewish Refugees Fleeing Nazi Terror
October 14, 4:15 p.m. via Zoom
Nazi persecution caused Jews from Germany, Austria and other countries to seek refuge in France, or to travel through France on their way out of Europe. Many without proper visas were forced to walk across the Pyrenees to reach Spain and Portugal, avoiding border patrols, to then catch ships to other continents. Those who guided the Jewish refugees on this arduous trek, known as passeurs, faced many dangers. Two female passeurs will be examined in depth.
Jacqueline Adams is an award-winning sociologist and Senior researcher at the University of California, Berkeley for the Institute for the Study of Societal Issues and a Research Fellow in 2021-2022 at the International Institute for Holocaust Research at Yad Vashem.
Luncheon in honor of Rabbi Samuel Kastel, Dan Glassman, and Dr. Lori Weintrob
November 14, 12:00 p.m.
This event supports and is held at Congregation B’nai Jeshrun, 275 Martling Avenue, Staten Island, NY.
Tickets are available ($75/pp) on the CBJ wesbite: https:www.cbjsi.com/
Empowering Women: Lessons from a Survivor of Genocide
November 17, 11:30 p.m.via Zoom/In-person
This event will feature speaker Consolee Nishimwe, global human rights activist and author of Tested to the Limit: A Genocide Survivor’s Story of Pain, Resilience and Hope.
10/18 Tuesday 7:00 pm • VIRTUAL • Liliana Segre: An Italian Story of the Holocaust
PAST EVENTS
Spring 2021 Events
January 20, 7pm:
One Hand, One Heart: An intergenerational celebration of Broadway and Yiddish Song
A multi-ethnic singing club, Shir Levav (Sing from the Heart) joins with Holocaust Survivor Arthur Spielman to perform music by Jewish composers of Broadway and a few favorite Yiddish songs. Guest Host: 2nd generation survivor Mickey Tennenbaum, Professor of Theater, Wagner College. Ms. Jan Martin will offer opening remarks. Co-Sponsored by the Wagner College Chai Society and Holocaust Center and the Staten Island Jewish Community Center, Esther Grushkin Seminars in Adult Jewish Education (SAJE).
Register in advance for this meeting:
https://wagner.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJcvcO2qqD4qH90tnvM4DN6pJbCb8bbLpxdd
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting. For information, contact Prof. Lori Weintrob: holocaust.center@wagner.edu
January 27, 7pm
Intergenerational Transmission of Mass Trauma in Families of Survivors
Keynote: Irit Felsen, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist specializing in trauma and traumatic loss teaches at Columbia University and Ferkauf Graduate School of Psychology, Yeshiva University.
With a special presentation and candle lighting by Manny Saks and Rabbi Mark Ben-Aron, 2nd Generation, and 3G grandchildren of Staten Island’s Holocaust Survivors.
International Holocaust Remembrance Commemoration
Co-sponsored by Staten Island Inter-religious Leadership, Wagner College Holocaust Center, Chai Society and Hillel, Congregation B’nai Jeshrun, COJO (Council of Jewish Organizations of Staten Island) and CURT (Communities United for Respect and Trust).
This live talk and Q&A will explore the strengths, challenges and long-term effects of trauma, with particular relevance to children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors, and its relevance in the current moment.
Register in advance for this meeting:
https://wagner.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJEtd-2sqjorH9dRcaT1nf9d47DyRVPjV4M7
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting. For information, contact Prof. Lori Weintrob: holocaust.center@wagner.edu
February 24 (1-2pm NY time, 8-9pm Israel time)
The Artist as Holocaust Heroine: Friedl Dicker-Brandeis
Speaker: Elena Makarova is a writer, educator, historian and exhibit curator, specializing in Jewish spiritual resistance in the Terezin Ghetto and Concentration Camp, particularly through art. Ms. Markova will talk about Dicker-Brandeis’ exceptional work as a teacher and her impact on modern art therapy. This event will be moderated by Prof. Lori R. Weintrob, Director, Wagner College Holocaust Center, who will discuss how Dicker-Brandeis’ political commitments informed her educational vision.
You are invited to a Zoom meeting.
When: Feb 24, 2021 01:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Register in advance for this meeting:
https://wagner.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJMvd-mprT0jE9xF8lf8c9Ev6eyqCNw8ub1z
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.
March 1, 7-8:15pm
“Tradition!: The Making of Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish.”
Join the conversation with Roy Gabay, producer of the Yiddish version of Sholem Aleichem’s work, Fiddler on the Roof, along with two actors, Jennifer Babiak and WCT graduate, Jonathan Quigley. Babiak played Golde, the mother of five daughters. A brief clip of Quigley in the “bottle dance” will be shown. We’ll discuss how the Yiddish production came to be, the hurdles the cast had to overcome and the meaningful experiences for all involved.
Moderated by Todd Price, professor in the Theatre and Arts Administration programs at Wagner College who also serves as Director of the Stanley Drama Awards.
This event is sponsored by the Wagner College Holocaust Center and Wagner College Theatre.
Register in advance for this meeting:
https://wagner.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJApdeuhqDouHdGB0t1waLia6loMOdv0Sf0o
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.
Thursday, March 4th 7:00-9:00pm
Primo Levi (1919-1987), Holocaust survivor
How can one find the words to describe the trauma and agony suffered at Auschwitz after one’s humanity has been taken away? Francesco Bonavita will explore Levi’s life; how Italian Jews saw themselves vis-à-vis the rise of fascism; his experience at Auschwitz; and his commitment to keep alive the narrative of the Holocaust. Born in Rome, Bonavita earned his doctorate in Comparative Literature on the Italian Renaissance. He taught at Kean University and NYU and writes about Italian cities on his blog, www.thewondersofitaly.com.
March 15, 4-5:30 pm
Mildred Harnack and the German Resistance to Hitler
CUNY Center for the Study of Women and Society. Free public zoom lecture:
Rebecca Donner will discuss the challenges in writing All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days, a work of narrative nonfiction about her great-great-aunt Mildred Harnack, the only American in the leadership of Berlin ’ s underground resistance during the Nazi regime. She will speak about the often-lost narrative of women in the German resistance and her archival discoveries as she set out to fuse elements of biography, political thriller, and scholarly detective story, interweaving letters, diaries, notes smuggled out of a Berlin prison, testimony of survivors, and declassified intelligence documents to reconstruct the moral courage of an enigmatic woman nearly erased by history.
For more information or to RSVP, click here: https://bit.ly/WWWLRebeccaDonner.
(Please note: an email with Zoom details will be sent on the day of the event.)
March 15, 7-8pm
With Pen and Pistol: Heroines of the Holocaust
Holocaust Memorial Center – Zekelman Family Campus
(See their website for details)
Speaker: Prof. Lori Weintrob
“You do not know the limits of my courage,” proclaimed Marianne Cohn to the Nazi guards who captured her while smugglng children across the French border to Switzerland. Trapped in Nazi-occupied Europe, thousands of women fought with defiance and dignity with pen and pistol to save themselves and others in situations of great danger and despair.
March 16th, 7pm Museum of Jewish Heritage
Heroines of The Holocaust
During the Holocaust, more than 3,000 women fought back against the Nazis in ghettos, forced labor camps, concentration camps, and partisan units. Join Dr. Lori Weintrob, Director of the Wagner College Holocaust Center, and Holocaust survivor Rachel Roth and moderator Rokhl Kaffrissen, for a program exploring the heroic lives and legacies of these female resistance fighters. Register for the event:
https://mjhnyc.org/events/heroines-of-the-holocaust-2/
March 29, 1:15pm
Annihilation or Selective Preservation? The Nazi ‘Cultural Genocide’ in Vienna during the Holocaust
Tim Corbett, Historian
Vienna’s five Jewish cemeteries are potent sites for construction and contestation of Austria’s Jewish heritage. Dr. Corbett will discuss issues raised in his book, Die Grabstätten meiner Väter: die jüdischen Friedhöfe Wiens Böhlau, 2021, about their destruction during the Holocaust and the post-war politics surrounding this form of cultural erasure of the achievements of centuries of Jewish Viennese men and women. A historian, editor, and translator, Dr. Corbett specializes in the modern cultural history of Austrian Jews. He was named as the inaugural 2018 Prins Fellow at the Center for Jewish History in New York. Moderated by Prof. Laura Morowitz, Art Historian.
Register in advance for this meeting:
https://wagner.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJIqd-GspjwsHdVP6CchZ6IgDCkL3220T4xY
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.
For information, contact Prof. Lori Weintrob: holocaust.center@wagner.edu
Wednesday, April 14th @ 7pm
From Romania to Auschwitz to New York: The Hecht Family
Film and Discussion
An international student from Romania, Rebeca Zoicas was inspired by meeting Auschwitz survivor Stefania Hecht to make a short documentary film. The film follows Stefania’s story from where she grew up in the northern part of Romania (then part of Hungary), to Auschwitz and a work camp in Czechoslovakia and finally to New York City. Dr. Alex Hecht, Stefania’s son, founded the Northern Transylvania Holocaust Museum in 2005 to promote Holocaust education.
You are invited to a Zoom meeting.
When: Apr 14, 2021 07:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Register in advance for this meeting:
https://wagner.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJUtc-irrD8vGda0bvhzxHWv5WFuadSJS_1Y
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.
April 8th, 7pm:
Staten Island Yom Ha’Shoah Committee Commemoration
Program TBA
April 20, 7 pm:
Anna Wrobel, Bearing Witness: Stories of the Holocaust – “Second Generation/First Person: Memory, History, and Poetry”
Birmingham Holocaust Education Center
Anna Wrobel is the daughter of Holocaust survivors – partisan and soldier – an American historian, teacher, poet and Holocaust Studies educator. Her history essays and poetry appear in Cafe Review, Lilith, Off the Coast and Jewish Currents. Anna has two poetry collections, Marengo Street (2012) and The Arrangement of Things (2018). Her poetry appeared in the University of Maine’s Holocaust Human Rights Center art/poetry exhibit, Dilemma of Memory, and are included in the Maine Jewish history exhibit at the State Museum. She’s presented at the Puffin Foundation on Jewish resistance in WWII and works with the Jewish Partisans Educational Foundation, to which her mother, Eta, was a founding consultant. Shoah poems, taken from her manuscript Sparrow Feathers-Second Generation/First Person, have been used by history and English teachers in high schools, colleges and adult education.
Register Here
June 3, 12-1 PM EST
Heroines of the Holocaust: A Mini-Conference
The 5th Annual Egon J. Salmon and Family Commemoration of Kristallnacht and the St. Louis
Nov. 9, 2020, 7:00 pm
The Wagner College Holocaust Center welcomes you to join us for the 5th Annual Egon J. Salmon and Family Commemoration of Kristallnacht and the St. Louis on Monday, November 9th via Zoom at 7:00 p.m. The commemoration will be led by guest speaker Julian E. Zelizer, Professor of History and Public Affairs at Princeton University and CNN Analyst. This talk willl examine the ways in which fighting anti-Semitism and the quest for racial justice intersect, drawing inspiration from the life and theology of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907-72)
Fall 2020 Events
2020_Fall_events_WCHC
Spring 2020 Events
SP20_Fiinal_HC Events Calendar brochure style (1)
Fall 2018 Events
FA18 HC Events BrochureDownload Events Brochure Here
Spring 2018 Events
HC_Events_Sp18_Brochure
2016 Events
Download a copy of our Spring 2016 Events Calendar below:
Holocaust Center Events Spring 2016
Download a copy of our Fall 2016 Events Calendar below:
Holocaust Center Events Fall 2016
Past Events 2013-2017
Video Gallery: Full Events
2014 Kristallnacht anniversary program
On Monday, Nov. 10, Wagner College hosted its annual Kristallnacht remembrance luncheon, led by history professor Lori Weintrob. Holocaust survivor Gabi Held talked about his experience as a teenager during Kristallnacht and as a Nazi prisoner in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Wagner Hillel President Julia Teichman, the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, also spoke. Watch 2014 Kristallnacht anniversary program
2014 Holocaust Remembrance Day speaker Bronia Brandman
On Thursday, April 24, 2014, Wagner College hosted this year's observance of Holocaust Remembrance Day, featuring keynote speaker Bronia Brandman, a survivor of Auschwitz and co-author of "The Girl Who Survived: A True Story of the Holocaust." Brandman is a gallery educator and member of the Speakers Bureau of the Museum of Jewish Heritage: A Living Memorial to the Holocaust. Watch 2014 Holocaust Remembrance Day speaker Bronia Brandman
Remembering Kristallnacht
On Thursday, Nov. 14, Wagner College marked the 75th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the "Night of Broken Glass," with a luncheon lecture by Reni Hanau, a survivor of the Nazi terror. Watch Remembering Kristallnacht
A Holocaust Cabaret: Theater as Resistance
Survivor testimony adapted for the theater and performed by students. Based on interviews from the USC Shoah Foundation. Directed by Theresa McCarthy and Lori Weintrob. Video by Theresa Reed. Watch A Holocaust Cabaret: Theater as Resistance
Meet Consolee Nishimwe
Consolee Nishimwe is a Rwandan genocide survivor who shares her story of survival and forgiveness with global audiences. Nishimwe recently visited Wagner College where she spoke to students from Port Richmond High School. Watch Meet Consolee Nishimwe
2014 Kristallnacht anniversary program
2014 Holocaust Remembrance Day speaker Bronia Brandman
Remembering Kristallnacht
A Holocaust Cabaret: Theater as Resistance
Meet Consolee Nishimwe