How was the Holocaust possible? This program provides an introduction to the Holocaust through an exploration of the factors leading to the rise of Nazism. Jodi Elowitz, Director of Education and Engagement at the Nancy & David Wolf Holocaust & Humanity Center, discusses the origins of the Holocaust, including the aftermath of World War I and the impact of antisemitism and nationalism in the rise of Nazism and its spread throughout Europe. If you’ve ever wondered how the events of World War II and the Holocaust began, this program will help answer those questions and demonstrate the need for all of us to be vigilant in the face of hatred today. Presented in partnership with the Nancy & David Wolf Holocaust & Humanity Center and the Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage.
Dr. Barbara Milewski, Associate Professor of Music at Swarthmore College, presents her research on the remarkable life and resistance poetry of Krystyna Zywulska, a Polish political prisoner at the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp in Nazi-occupied Poland from 1943 until her escape in 1945. While imprisoned at Auschwitz, Zywulska wrote dozens of poems and songs, which were shared among camp prisoners, and which use a multi-layered approach of satire, stark realism, and optimism to paint a vivid picture of life in Auschwitz. Zywulska’s poetry helped to provide some solace of the heart to camp prisoners, played a role in her survival, and shines a light on the complex world of oppressors, the oppressed, and artistic instruments of psychological resistance, testimony, and hope.
Join Dr. Peter Hayes for the 12th Frederick M. Schweitzer Lecture, “November 1938 as a Turning Point?”. Dr. Hayes’ talk focuses on the November 1938 incident known as Kristallnacht, when Nazis in Germany set fire to synagogues, vandalized Jewish homes, schools, and businesses and killed close to 100 Jews. In the aftermath of Kristallnacht, also called the “Night of Broken Glass,” approximately 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and sent to Nazi concentration camps. There is a short performance by the West Point Jewish Chapel Choir before the lecture. This year’s event is co-sponsored by the KHC; the Holocaust, Genocide, and Interfaith Education Center at Manhattan College; and the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at West Point Academy.
The development of the German concentration camp system reveals how ruling parties engineer the mass detention of civilians without trial. While the horrors of Nazi extermination camps remain unique in history, the first several years of German concentration camps parallel how governments in other places and times have adopted mass detention for similar political purposes. Join Andrea Pitzer, author and journalist, for a discussion about what gives rise to camps, including why their use expanded exponentially in the last decade, and what strategies have been successful in opposing them. Presented in partnership with the Nancy & David Wolf Holocaust & Humanity Center.
An overview of the ways the bodies of Black Americans have been represented in the dominant (white) American culture from slavery to the current moment of mass incarceration and over-policing reveals the tension between an impulse to destroy and the desire to exploit. In American imagery and reality, Black bodies are trapped by the cruel paradox of being treated as simultaneously expendable and profitable. Dr. Agnieszka Tuszynska, Associate Professor of English at Queensborough Community College, offers examples from visual culture, literature, and legal history to illustrate how myths and stereotypes about Black people have been used to justify various forms of control and containment of Black lives. Presented in partnership with the Nancy & David Wolf Holocaust & Humanity Center.
In recognition of Native American Heritage Month, join Gina Adams (Ojibwa, Lakota, Irish, and Lithuanian descent), artist and Assistant Professor at Emily Carr University of Art & Design in discussion with Danyelle Means (Oglala Lakota), Director of Institutional Advancement at the Institute of American Indian Arts and the co-curator of the Harriet & Kenneth Kupferberg Holocaust Center’s past exhibition, Survivance & Sovereignty on Turtle Island. This conversation focuses on Adams’s “Broken Treaties Project,” and how it intertwines history, culture, and memory. The artist and curator discuss the meaning of survival through remembrance, the significance of expressing it artistically, and its relevance to Holocaust education today. Presented by the Harriet & Kenneth Kupferberg Holocaust Center and the Museum & Gallery Studies Program in the Art & Design Department at QCC in partnership with the Nancy & David Wolf Holocaust & Humanity Center; the Peace & Conflict Studies Programs at the University of Manitoba; and the Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies at the University of Minnesota.