Holocaust Awareness Week Program, 2016
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HOLOCAUST AWARENESS WEEK JANUARY 25-28, 2016 Presented by Northeastern University's College of Social Sciences and Humanities, the Holocaust Awareness Committee , and the Northeastern Humanities Center Stories of Slave Labor and the Art of Freedom Northeastern University College of Social Sciences and Humanities northeastern.edu/hac ABOUT HOLOCAUST AWARENESS WEEK The Holocaust Awareness Committee at Northeastern University publicly remembers the Holocaust each year, not only as historical fact and a memorial to its millions of victims, but also as a warning that the horrors of the past must never be re peated. The programs that we present bear witness to the Holocaust's events and explore issues arising out of the war of extermination against jews and other groups targeted by the Nazis. Speakers ask how lessons learned from the Holocaust can be applied to our own historical moment. The survivor lecture series is named for Dr. Philip N. (Phil) Backstrom, who died October 29, 2015, at age 83. Phil taught European history at Northeastern for 35 years, until his retirement in 1995. A passionate advocate for civil rights, Phil was instrumental to the founding of the Holocaust Awareness Committee in 1991. ' ( ' ' ' ' .\ 'I t ' SCHEDULE OF EVENTS Northeastern Holocaust Commemoration "Reality is the Satire": The Will to Hope in the Writings of Jura Soyfer Madelyn Stone The Pogrom in Lemberg, 1 July 1941 : A Local Atrocity as International History Jeffrey Burds Monday, January 25 8-9:30 a.m. Raytheon Amphitheater 120 Forsyth Street Bill Giessen Film Series "Silence of the Quandts" Post-Film Discussion with Professor Timothy Brown Monday, January 25 5-6:30 p.m. 90 Snell Library Hors d'oeuvres will be served during the film. Philip N. Backstrom, Jr. Survivor Lecture Series A Talk with Holocaust Survivor, Max Michelson Tuesday, January 26 12-1 p.m. 909 Renaissance Park 1135 Tremont Street Lunch will be served. Exhibit Opening and Reception Letters to Sala: A Young Woman's Life in Nazi Labor Camps l . Wednesday, January 27 4-5:30 p.m. · r 1 International Vi llage . ' \ 1155 Tremont Street I) ' t Exhibit will be open to the public january 20 - February 18, 2016. Continued next page The 24th Annual Robert Salomon Morton Lecture Telling Sala's Holocaust Story: Her Letters' Journey into a Book, Exhibit, Play, and Film Ann Kirschner, Arlene Hutton, Murray Nossel, and Jill Vexler Wednesday, January 27 6-7:30 p.m. Raytheon Amphitheater 120 Forsyth Street A Staged Reading of the Play 11 Letters to Sala 11 Written By Arlene Hutton, Directed by Paula Plum, Produced by Erika Koss Thursday, January 28 4-6 p.m. 909 Renaissance Park 1135 Tremont Street Reception to follow All events take place at Northeastern University and are free and open to the public. NORTHEASTERN HOLOCAUST COMMEMORATION Monday, January 25 II 8 a.m. II Raytheon Amphitheater II Egan Research Center II 120 Forsyth Street Welcome Uta G. Poiger, Dean, College of Social Sciences and Humanities Opening Remarks Introduction of Speakers Laurel Leff, Associate Professor ofJournalism and Associate Director ofJ ewish Studies, College of Arts, Media and Design; Chair, Northeastern Holocaust Awareness Committee Gideon Klein Scholar Presentation "Real ity is the Satire": The Will to Hope in the Writings of Jura Soyfer Madelyn Stone, College of Arts, Media and Design '16 Keynote Presentation The Pogrom in Lemberg , 1 July 1941: A Local Atrocity as International History Jeffrey Burds, Associate Professor of History College of Social Sciences and Humanities Closing Remarks Lori Letkovi tz, Ruderman Professor ofJ ewish Studies and Professor of English; Director, Northeastern Humanities Center; Director, Jewish Studies Program, College of Social Sciences and Humanities Continued next page Gideon Klein Scholar Presentation "Reality is the Satire": The Will to Hope in the Writings of Jura Soyfer The Jewish writer Jura Soyfer was born on the eve of the First World War in present-day Ukraine. A child refugee of the Bolshevik Revolution, he became a politically active citizen in Vienna from the age of 14. His poetry, plays, journalism and novel fell partial victim to Nazi hands when he was taken to Dachau as a political prisoner in 1938, but what survives in his own words and the words of those who knew him is a testament to to his brilliance and courage. Unafraid to mock systems of economic and political oppression, unabashed in portending the imminent disaster mounting under National Socialism, Jura Soyfer parodied absurdity in works that often barely skirted the censor's obstruction. When he died of typhus at Buchenwald, aged just 26, he left behind a legacy of willful optimism embodied nowhere more poignantly than in his "Dachau Song." The lyrics glint with irony, managing to turn the adage "Arbeit macht frei " into a rallying cry of humor and of hope. Madelyn Stone is a fifth-year history and journalism double major with a minor in international affairs. Her honors thesis looks at South African resistance art during apartheid, based in part on research she conducted as a Presidential Global Scholar on co-op in Cape Town. She hopes to pursue a career in history, either public or academic, with opportunities to examine issues of repression and resistance more closely. Keynote Presentation The Pogrom in Lemberg, 1 July 1941: A Local Atrocity as International History Based on published and unpublished photographs, films and eyewitness testimonies from archives and private collections from nine countries, Professor Jeffrey Burds reconstructs the murder of over 3,000 Jews in Lemberg/ Lwow/ L'viv, Ukraine, on 1 July 1941. This multimedia presentation is based on photographs from archives and public and private collections in Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Germany, France, England, Israel, Canada, and the United States. Jeffrey Burds is associate professor of history at Northeastern University. Educated at Northwestern University and Yale University, Professor Burds is the recipient of numerous grants and honors from !REX, Fulbright-Hays, the Social Science Research Council, the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, the National Council and the Holocaust Educational Foundation. He was also a Charles H. Revson Foundation Fellow at the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies (2008), and he presented the prestigious Joseph and Rebecca Meyerhoff Annual Lecture at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2014. Professor Burds is the author of four books •• and sixteen scholarly articles. These include Communist Collaborators and the German Occupation in Soviet Zones, 1941-1943 (2015); Holocaust in Rovno: The Massacre at Sosenki Forest, November 1941 (2013); "Sexual Violence in Europe in World War II ," published in Politics and Society (2009); Espionage and Nationalism (published in Russian in 201 0), and Soviet Informants Networks (published in Russian in 2007). 'I ! ,! .. BILL GIESSEN FILM SERIES Monday, January 25 II 5 p.m. II 90 Snell Library "Silence of the Quandts" This 60-minute film reveals the disturbing involvement of some of Germany's economic elites with the Nazi regime. "Silence of the Quandts" is a portrait of the owners of BMW- the Quandt family- whose business benefited directly from their collaboration with the Nazis and the use of forced labor in concentration camps. This documentary won one of Germany's most prestigious fi lm awards- the Hans Joachim Friedrich's prize for television journalism. Hors d'oeuvres will be served during the film. Post-Film Discussion Timothy Brown, Professor of History, College of Social Sciences and Humanities Timothy Scott Brown is the author of West Germany in the Global Sixties: The Anti Authoritarian Revolt, 1962-1978 (Cambridge, 2013). He is co-editor (with Andrew Lison) of The Global Sixties in Sound and Vision: Media, Counterculture, Revolt (Palgrave, 2014), and (with Lorena Anton) of Between the Avantgarde and the Everyday: Subversive Politics in Europe, 1957 to the Present (Berghahn, 2011). His essays have appeared in the American Historical Review, The journal of Social History, German Studies Review, and Contemporary European History. His new book project is entitled "The Greening of Cold War Germany: Environmentalism and Social Movements across the Wall and Beyond, 1968-1989." I I l• r ) f l " ( ' )' l t \ /I ~ '~ < l l ,. ' .>~ ( I' / t PHILIP N. BACKSTROM, JR. SURVIVOR LECTURE SERIES Tuesday, January 26 II 12 p.m. II 909 Renaissance Park II 1135 Tremont Street A Talk with Holocaust survivor, Max Michelson Max Michelson was born in 1924 into a large and loving j ewish family in Riga, Latvia. By the end of World War II, most of his family and friends were dead- murdered during the Nazi occupation of Latvia. Michelson will describe the circumstances that he found himself in when first the Soviets and then the Germans invaded Latvia. One day, Michelson came home to find that his mother had been taken away by the police. The majority of Michelson's relatives and friends were killed during the liquidation of the ghetto. Michelson managed to survive and as the war's end approached, he was sent to Magdeberg, Germany, where he was liberated on April 11 , 1945. Max Michelson eventually found his way to New York. He married and became an electrical engineer, settling in the Boston area. Michelson recounts that, after the destruction of the Large Ghetto in Riga, an old Latvian woman, a stranger, said to him: "Soon they are going to kill you all. " After the fall of Germany, during his first night in a Reel Army Hospital, a fell ow patient told him, 'You wi ll be dead by morning." Both predictions proved wrong. Max Michelson survived, "by happenstance" he says, but with unthinkable losses. Lunch will be served EXHIBIT OPENING and RECEPTION Wednesd ay, January 27 II 4 - 5:30 p.m. II International Village II 1155 Tremont Street Letters to Sala: A Young Woman's Life in Nazi Labor Camps The Letters to Sala exhibit is a coll ection of letters, photographs and other documents that depicts 16-year-old Sala Garncarz's five-year odyssey in forced labor camps, where she was imprisoned from 1940 to 1945.