2012 - 2013 Events

Stephen Victor Kraus kicks off the series with a talk about his experiences during the Nazi period. His is the story of a boy who grew up in interwar Poland. As the German tanks rolled in, his family fled. After an excruciating odyssey through Romania, Turkey, and Yugoslavia, they reached Palestine and safety. Kraus will share memories of his life in Warsaw and his dramatic escape.

Link: Escaping to Palestine

The identity of Hungarian Jewish Holocaust survivors is the focus of a presentation by Dr. Andrea Petö. In Legalism and Memory Petö discusses Jewish participation in post-WW II trials and its negative effect on their identity. She is an associate professor in the department of Gender Studies at the Central European University in Budapest and has published widely on the Holocaust.

This event features San Diego resident Trudie Richman-Wilder. Richman was born in Vienna in 1923 and managed to escape to the US during World War II. Her memoir Escape from Vienna details reminiscences of her childhood and her bid for freedom. An accomplished singer and guitarist who has recorded folksongs for the prestigious Smithsonian Folkways label, Richman will conclude her presentation with some Yiddish songs.

Link: A Childhood in the Shadow of the Holocaust

Performance artist and playwright Claudia Stevens whose parents fled Europe uses music to explore the Holocaust. This event focuses on the real-life experience of Fania Fenelon, a member of the women's orchestra at Auschwitz who was forced to perform to an audience of concentration camp guards. Fenelon's story raises profound ethical questions which Stevens addresses in an original, interactive way. Stevens has been a creative and performing artist for many years. Her numerous honors include residencies at the Gitameit Art Center in Rangoon, Burma; RS9 Studio Theatre in Budapest; and Brandeis University's Women's Studies Research Center. She regularly performs her solo plays at leading universities and arts centers in the United States.

Speaker Myriam Miedzian is a professor of philosophy and author of numerous books, articles, blogs, and op-eds on social, cultural, and political issues. He Walked Through Walls tells the story of how her father, born in Poland in 1901, survived three 20th century European wars including WW II and the Holocaust.

Link: He Walked Through Walls: A Reading and Discussion of Survival Ethics

Sponsored by Miriam and Jerome Katzin Astor

Speaker Ellen Cassedy, a scholar of Yiddish and a playwright, researches and writes about Lithuania's genocidal past, the Soviet era, and Lithuanian hopes for the future. Her new book We Are Here is a testimony of her decade-long study of an unparalleled tragedy. Please note: this event is jointly sponsored with the Lawrence Family Jewish Community Center and held at the JCC Astor Judaica Library.

Speaker Dr. Franklin Gaylis, a San Diego physician who grew up in South Africa, has traveled three continents in search of his family's past in Lithuania.

Link: From Shtetl to Shtetl: A Journey Across Three Continents

In the past Joel E. Dimsdale, Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry Emeritus, has researched the concentration camp survivors. More recently, he has studied the mental world of the perpetrators. At this talk, he presents his latest research based on an analysis of Rorschach inkblot tests administered at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials.

Link: Anatomy of Malice: Rorschach Results from Nuremberg War Criminals

Mark James tells the story of his brother and namesake Marek who was one of twenty Jewish children taken from the concentration camp Neuengamme and hanged in the basement of a school in Hamburg, barely three weeks before war's end.

Link: The Murders at Bullenhuser Damm

Sponsored by Phyllis and Dan Epstein

San Diegan Holocaust survivors Lou Dunst and Frances Gelbart share their memories of the Holocaust. They both passed through several concentration camps including Auschwitz and Mauthausen.

Link: Living the Past: In Honor of San Diego's Holocaust Survivors

The turbulent relationship of Alexander Stille's parents, a mid-Western Protestant and an Italian Jew of Russian descent, is at the heart of his new family memoir. The Force of Things: A Marriage in War and Peace explores the ways two people contend with events and powers beyond their control in a time out of joint. Stille is an internationally renowned and award-winning journalist and the author of several books.

Link: The Force of Things: A Marriage in War and Peace

Sponsored by William and Michelle Lerach

Livia Krancberg was born in the Romanian town of Petrova in 1919. During World War Two she was deported to Auschwitz and later to the women's concentration camp Ravensbrück. A regular speaker at local San Diego schools, this is her first visit to UC San Diego.

Link: Surviving Auschwitz

HIEU 145, "The Holocaust as Public History," taught by visiting professor Margrit Frölich 

In this course students write a paper based on an in-depth engagement with select video testimony. Reflecting on the complicated relationship between history, memory, and trauma allows students to come away with a deeper understanding of the socially constructed nature of the past and the continued relevance of eyewitness testimony.

HITO 133, "War and Society/Second World War," taught by Ryan Zroka

In this course students are given the opportunity to analyze select testimony by Jewish as well as non-Jewish survivors of the Holocaust and the Second World War and to write an essay based on their insights.

Public talk at San Diego Mesa College

To mark the opening of the traveling exhibit "The Courage to Remember," Mesa College has invited Susanne Hillman to give a talk on the Holocaust. "What Happened, Happened: Reflections on Genocide, Unheroic Survival, and Witness Testimony" is based on extensive research in the Visual History Archive and on Hillman's experience as the program coordinator of the Holocaust Living History Workshop.