After a year of virtual events absent the excitement that comes from sharing in-person programs, the Rodgers Center for Holocaust Education resumes on-campus events this fall. As we have seen so often over the last year, bringing awareness and knowledge of the Holocaust to our students and to the broader community is more crucial than
In Douma, Syria, a horrific poison gas attack takes 60 lives and injures thousands more. Once again, we are confronted by the inhumanity of humanity. With suffering and death, murder and brutality, in the here and now, why bother to remember what occurred more than 70 years ago? In his latest book, In Broad Daylight:
LIGHTING OF CANDLES OF REMEMBRANCE AND MUSICAL TRIBUTES Cantor Chayim Frenkel, Kehillat Reconstructionist Congregation of Pacific Palisades. Accompanied by pianist David Kamenir Violinist Iman Khosrowpour, Conductor, Symphony Orchestra and Violin Faculty, Irvine Valley College Pianist Kevin Kwan Louks, Founding member of Trio Céleste and President of Chamber Music | OC REFLECTIONS Father Patrick Desbois Founder and president of
No matter how hard I try, I can’t imagine the horror that Lt. Gen. Roméo Dallaire has seen. In Samantha Power’s introduction to General Dallaire’s book, Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda, she writes that when she learned of Dallaire’s experiences in Rwanda, she recalled Moshe the Beadle in Elie
Tom Blatt was such a force of nature that it seemed unimaginable that there would ever be a time when he would not be with us. Tom spent virtually his entire life fighting–first for survival and then, after the Holocaust, for memory and justice. One of the few survivors of Sobibor, the death camp in
A few weeks ago I wrote about how Bettina Stangneth’s book Eichmann Before Jerusalem: The Unexamined Life of a Mass Murderer had transformed our understanding of the perpetrator Adolf Eichmann. So too has Wendy Lower’s book Hitler’s Furies: German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields expanded our knowledge of German women in the Third Reich, offering a much more nuanced, complex, and indeed, troubling portrait of the young German women who chose to go to “the wild east.”
If you are reading this blog, then you undoubtedly already have an interest in the history of the Holocaust. How you made that connection varies from person to person. For some, the link is family history; for others, some aspect of the story has drawn you in and motivated you to learn about this difficult
November 17 | 7 p.m. Chapman Auditorium | Memorial Hall Father Patrick Desbois President, Yahad-In Unum Author of The Holocaust By Bullets: A Priest’s Journey to Uncover the Truth Behind the Murder of 1.5 Million Jews Although nearly seventy years have passed since the war in Europe ended, and with it
Seventy years ago, on Yom Kippur, September 27, 1944, the Jews of Auschwitz debated whether or not to fast. They were, after all, starving, each of them near death. Among the prisoners was a teenager just three days shy of his 16th birthday.
Bettina Stangneth’s Eichmann Before Jerusalem: The Unexamined Life of a Mass Murderer From time to time, I want to share with you my thoughts about books that I think are important contributions to the study of the Holocaust. In a recent New York Times article (9/3/2014) Jennifer Schuessler wrote: “More than 50 years after