The Holocaust Center for Humanity and Pacific Lutheran University presents a 3-part series: America and the Holocaust, dissecting America’s relationship to the Holocaust with historians, authors, and film experts.
This series is FREE. Registration for one or all presentations is available.
Upcoming Presentations
Tuesday, October 6 | Hell Before Their Very Eyes: American Soldiers Liberate Concentration Camps in Germany
With Dr. John McManus, Military Historian, who sheds new light on a relatively overlooked aspect of the Holocaust, namely the experiences of American soldiers who liberated or witnessed concentration camps. Drawing on the rich blend of archival sources and first hand accounts, including unit journals, interviews, oral histories, memoirs, diaries, letters, and published recollections that provided the foundation for his book "Hell Before Their Very Eyes," he will discuss the realities of the liberation of Ohrdruf, Buchenwald and Dachau
Tuesday, October 13 | Rescue Board: The Untold Story of America's Efforts to Save the Jews of Europe
With Dr. Rebecca Erbelding, Historian, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and author of Rescue Board.America has long been criticized for refusing to give harbor to the Jews during World War II as Hitler and the Nazis closed in. Yet few know the extraordinary unknown story of the War Refugee Board, a US government effort late in the war to save the remaining European Jews. In January 1944, facing mounting public pressure and pressure within his administration to do more to aid European Jews, President Franklin Roosevelt agreed to create a new government agency, the War Refugee Board, empowering it to rescue the victims of Nazi persecution. Over the next twenty months, John Pehle, the young Treasury Department lawyer tasked with heading this operation, pulled together D.C. pencil pushers, international relief workers, smugglers, diplomats, millionaires, and rabble-rousers to run operations across four continents and a dozen countries. They tricked Nazis, forged identity papers, maneuvered food and medicine into concentration camps, recruited spies, leaked news stories, laundered money, negotiated ransoms, and funneled millions of dollars into Europe. This is the story of how the United States War Refugee Board saved tens of thousands of lives.
Tuesday, October 20 | Atrocity Pictures: Antisemitism, the Holocaust, and the Hollywood Studio System Before 1948
With Dr. Steven Carr, Indiana University-Purdue University, Fort Wayne, and author of Atrocity Pictures. Much of the discussion about Hollywood and anti-Semitism has assumed anti-Semitism came out of Hollywood. Less attention has considered antisemitism directed toward Hollywood. With both increasing political instability and the resurgence of organized hate groups in the U.S., anti-Semitic allegations of Jewish control over the media today remain poised to regain mainstream traction. This informal Q&A will discuss how anti-Semitic allegations of Jewish control over Hollywood helped shape popular depictions of Nazism and the Holocaust in mainstream Hollywood film. With the memory of World War I still fresh in the minds of many Americans, along with a growing isolationist alliance against President Roosevelt, the Hollywood studio system throughout the 1930s and 40s found itself caught between intensifying public opinion accusing the industry of either not doing enough to combat Nazism, or accusing it of pushing the country into war to serve Jewish interests.
For more information on this Lunch and Learn series, or other upcoming Holocaust Center for Humanity events, visit their website.
The Holocaust Center for Humanity teaches the lessons of the Holocaust, inspiring students of all ages to confront bigotry and indifference, promote human dignity, and take action.
