H O L O C A U S T A W A R E N E S S

W E E K

J A N U A R Y 2 5 - 2 8 , 2 0 1 6

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.edu/hac

A B O U T H O L O C A U S T A W A R E N E S S W E E K

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 repeated.

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.

S C H E D U L E O F E V E N T S

Northeastern Holocaust Commemoration"Reality is the Satire": The Will to Hope in the Writings of Jura Soyfer

Madelyn StoneThe Pogrom in Lemberg, 1 July 1941: A Local Atrocity as International History

Jeffrey BurdsMonday, 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

Wednesday, January 27 4 - 5:30 p.m.

International Village 1155 Tremont Street

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 FilmAnn 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 "Letters to Sala"Written By Arlene Hutton,

Directed by Paula Plum, Produced by Erika KossThursday, 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.

N O R T H E A S T E R N H O L O C A U S T C O M M E M O R A T I O N

Welcome Uta G. Poiger, Dean, College of Social Sciences and Humanities

Opening Remarks

Introduction of SpeakersLaurel Leff, Associate Professor of Journalism and Associate Director of Jewish Studies,

College of Arts, Media and Design;Chair, Northeastern Holocaust Awareness Committee

Gideon Klein Scholar Presentation

"Reality 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 RemarksLori Lefkovitz, Ruderman Professor of Jewish Studies and Professor of English;

Director, Northeastern Humanities Center; Director, Jewish Studies Program, College of Social Sciences and Humanities

Continued next page

Monday, January 25 ⁄⁄ 8 a.m. ⁄⁄ Raytheon Amphitheater ⁄⁄ Egan Research Center ⁄⁄ 120 Forsyth Street

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 PresentationThe 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 IREX, 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 2010), and Soviet Informants Networks (published in Russian in 2007).

B I L L G I E S S E N F I L M S E R I E S

"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 film 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."

Monday, January 25 ⁄⁄ 5 p.m. ⁄⁄ 90 Snell Library

P H I L I P N . B A C K S T R O M , J R . S U R V I V O R L E C T U R E S E R I E S

A Talk with Holocaust survivor, Max Michelson

Max Michelson was born in 1924 into a large and loving Jewish 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 Red Army Hospital, a fellow patient told him, "You will be dead by morning." Both predictions proved wrong. Max Michelson survived, "by happenstance" he says, but with unthinkable losses.

Lunch will be served

Tuesday, January 26 ⁄⁄ 12 p.m. ⁄⁄ 909 Renaissance Park ⁄⁄ 1135 Tremont Street

E X H I B I T O P E N I N G a n d R E C E P T I O N

The Letters to Sala exhibit is a collection 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.

The letters were donated to the New York Public Library’s Dorot Jewish Division by Sala’s daughter, Ann Kirschner. The letters document the harsh consequences of the Nazi slave labor system on both the interned Jews and their torn families. This traveling exhibit was originally curated by Jill Vexler for the Wachenheim Gallery of the New York Public Library.

The opening reception will include a short service in observance of International Holocaust Remembrance Day. The service will be led by Alexander Kern, Executive Director, Center for Spirituality, Dialogue and Service, and Eli Herb, Northeastern’s Jewish Spiritual Advisor. Author Ann Kirschner and curator Jill Vexler will give brief remarks.

Exhibit will be open to the public January 20 through February 18, 2016.

In Partnership with Facing History and Ourselves and the Jewish Community Relations Council

Letters to Sala: A Young Woman's Life in Nazi Labor Camps

Wednesday, January 27 ⁄⁄ 4 - 5:30 p.m. ⁄⁄ International Village ⁄⁄ 1155 Tremont Street

T H E 2 4 t h A N N U A L R O B E R T S A L O M O N M O R T O N L E C T U R E

Telling Sala's Holocaust Story: Her Letters' Journey into a Book, Exhibit, Play, and Film

Author Ann Kirschner moderates a panel that includes curator Jill Vexler, playwright Arlene Hutton, and filmmaker Murray Nossell.

Ann Kirschner is dean of Macaulay Honors College of the City University of New York and president of the Macaulay Honors College Foundation. An entrepreneur in media and technology, she is founder and former CEO of Fathem, PrimeTime 24, and NFL.com. Her first book, Sala’s Gift (Simon and Schuster, 2006), tells the story of her mother’s wartime rescue of letters from Nazi labor camps and has been published in seven languages. Her latest book, Lady at the OK Corral: The True Story of Josephine Marcus Earp, was published by HarperCollins in March 2013. A graduate of University of Buffalo with a BA in English, Kirshner received her MA from University of Virginia and her PhD in English from Princeton University, where she was honored as a Whiting Fellow in the Humanities.

Jill Vexler is a cultural anthropologist who curates exhibitions about cultural identity and social history. Her graduate studies were at the National School of Anthropology in Mexico City, and she received her PhD from the University of California, Los Angeles. Since 1997, her exhibitions have focused on pre-war Jewish life and Holocaust-related themes. In addition to Northeastern's exhibit, Letters to Sala, she curated Oswiecim, Oshpitzin, Auschwitz: Portrait of Memories, the inaugural exhibition at the Auschwitz Jewish Center. Vexler also curated Images of Resistance – The Photography of Partisan Faye Schulman for the Jewish Partisans Educational Foundation and the Holocaust Museum and Studies Center at the Bronx High School of Science. In 2014, she served as a Visiting Specialist in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania for the U.S. Department of State.

Arlene Hutton is an alumna of New Dramatists and member of Ensemble Studio Theatre and Dramatists' Guild. She is best known for "The Nibroc Trilogy," which includes "Last Train to Nibroc" (Drama League Best Play nomination), "See Rock City" (Spirit of America Award) and "Gulf View Drive" (LA Weekly, Ovation Award nominations). Hutton wrote "Letters to Sala," a play adapted from Ann Kirschner's book Sala's Gift. Her plays have been presented Off- and Off-Off-Broadway and at theaters across the United States, in London, Edinburgh, and throughout the world. She has had residencies at the Australian National Playwrights Conference, New Harmony Project, MacDowell Colony and Yaddo.

Wednesday, January 27 ⁄⁄ 6 p.m. ⁄⁄ Raytheon Amphitheater ⁄⁄ 120 Forsyth Street

T H E 2 4 t h A N N U A L R O B E R T S A L O M O N M O R T O N L E C T U R E

Murray Nossell is an Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker, teacher, and performer. Nossel's documentary films have screened in film festivals across the world, including Sundance, Full Frame and IDFA Amsterdam. In 2003, he received an Academy Award nomination and a Henry Hampton Prize for "Why Can't We Be a Family Again?" His film, "A Brooklyn Family Tale," aired on PBS in 2002, and his feature-documentary, "Paternal Instinct," aired on HBO and the BBC. Nossel is also director of "Turn to Me" featuring Nobel Prize–winning author Elie Wiesel. Nossel currently directs Narativ, a company he co-founded with Paul Browde that trains people in the art of storytelling. He and Browde also wrote and perform in "Two Men Talking,” which has been performed at the Edinburgh Festival, on London's West End, and Off-Broadway in New York. Nossel completed his BA and MA degrees in psychology from the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa. He received a doctorate in social work from Columbia University, where he taught an advanced research methods course in "Life Histories and Narratives."

About the Robert Salomon Morton Memorial LectureBorn in 1906 in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, Robert Salomon Morton was educated in the School of the Orthodox Synagogue, Kahal Adath Jeshurun. He was not only a witness to but also the personal target of Nazi persecution in the years leading up to World War II. A particularly harrowing experience in 1934 convinced him that he had no choice but to apply for immigration to the United States – a process that took three years, but finally resulted in his coming to Boston. For many years, he and his wife, Sophie, were caretakers of and caterers for the Hillel Foundation at Harvard University. It was during his time at Hillel that a chance meeting at a barbershop brought Morton together with Bill Giessen, then a postdoctoral fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Giessen had grown up and was educated in Germany during and following the Nazi period. The long-time friendship and ongoing conversation that resulted from this meeting helped to foster a sense of discovery between the two men. Both Morton and Giessen have since passed away. The annual Morton Memorial Lecture serves as a memorial to them both and their inspiring friendship.

The Robert Salomon Morton Memorial Lecture is sponsored by the Gustel Cormann Giessen Memorial Fund and the Robert S. Morton Lecture Fund at Northeastern.The lectureship was created by Northeastern professor Bill Giessen.

T H E 2 4 t h A N N U A L

R O B E R T S A L O M O N M O R T O N

L E C T U R E

A S T A G E D R E A D I N G O F " L E T T E R S T O S A L A "

Thursday, January 28 ⁄⁄ 4 p.m. ⁄⁄ 909 Renaissance Park ⁄⁄ 1135 Tremont Street

“Letters to Sala” is a play adapted from the book Sala’s Gift by Sala’s daughter Ann Kirschner, a remarkable story of a young girl’s survival during wartime Germany. Five Years. Seven Nazi labor camps. Over 350 hidden letters.

“Letters to Sala” draws from the emotional journeys that begin for both Ann and Sala when the letters resurface. Playwright Arlene Hutton drives the two stories to a single question: What is to be done with these letters? If Sala risked her life to hold onto them as a young woman imprisoned in a work camp, are they merely the emotionally rich relics of her past life? Or are they worthy and important historical documents that demand to be shared with the public? Three generations of Kirschner women must work together to sift through the past and come to terms with the true gravity of Sala’s letters.

Written by Arlene HuttonPublished by Dramatists Play Service, Inc.Directed by Paula Plum, Visiting Part-time Lecturer, Department of TheatreProduced by Erika Koss, Assistant Dean for Research, Program Development, and Outreach, College of Social Sciences and Humanities

Presented in partnership with Northeastern University's Department of Theatre

C A S T

Character

Sala

Cast Member

June LewinAnn Linda GoetzElizabeth (older daughter) Lindsey RugglesCaroline (younger daughter) Holly KapinosYoung Sala Lydia Barnett-MulliganChana (mother) Dana BlockElfriede Kate ShanahanRaizel (sister) Lizzie MilanovichBlima (sister) Grace TrapnellLucia/Sara Hayley SherwoodFrymka/Zusi Annie HochheiserAla Gertner Erin ButcherChaim Kaufman/Herbert Pache Adam StrandbergSidney Kirschner Mason SandRachel Katie SuchytaGucia/Layna Dina Dana SternRozia Julia AlvarezHarry Haubenstock Ethan Koss-SmithNarrator & Guards Thomas Grenon

A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S

2015-16 Holocaust Awareness Week Committee Members

Laurel Leff (chair), Associate Professor, School of Journalism; Associate Director, Jewish Studies Program

Max Abrahms, Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science

Natalie Bormann, Associate Teaching Professor, Department of Political Science

Phil Brown, University Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Health Sciences; Director of Social Science Environmental Health Research Institute

Eli Herb, Jewish Spiritual Advisor, Center for Spirituality, Dialogue, and Service

Alexander Levering Kern, Executive Director, Center for Spirituality, Dialogue, and Service

Erika Koss, Assistant Dean for Research, Program Development, and Outreach, College of Social Sciences and Humanities

Lori Lefkovitz, Ruderman Professor of Jewish Studies and Professor of English; Director, Northeastern Humanities Center; Director, Jewish Studies Program

Debra Mandel, Acting Associate Dean, User Services, Northeastern University Libraries

James Ross, Associate Professor, School of Journalism, Jewish Studies Program

Jenny Sartori, Associate Director, Jewish Studies Program

Madelyn Stone, Gideon Klein Scholar, College of Arts, Media and Design, College of Social Sciences and Humanities'16

Dov Waxman, Professor of Political Science, International Affairs, and Israel Studies; Co-director, Middle East Center, Stotsky Professor in Jewish Historical and Cultural Studies

Danielle Murad Weiss, College of Social Sciences and Humanities '19

Rose Zoltek-Jick, Associate Director, Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project, School of Law

About the College of Social Sciences and Humanities The College of Social Sciences and Humanities combines Northeastern’s signature focus on experiential education with rigorous study of society, culture, and politics. Founded in 2010, the college is a leader in the experiential liberal arts, an organizational philosophy and an educational model that guides its research, teaching, and public engagement with both local and global communities. The College of Social Sciences and Humanities offers a variety of undergraduate and graduate programs across its 17 academic units, which include the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice and the School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs. northeastern.edu/cssh

About the Northeastern Humanities Center We believe that critical and reflective study of culture develops acumen and enhances sensibilities. Founded in 2008, the Northeastern Humanities Center supports faculty and student research in the humanities and social sciences; facilitates collaboration across disciplines; and presents humanistic and social scientific research to the wider university community and general public. Through our fellowship program, working groups, discus-sion forums, symposia, seminars, informal dialogues, conferences, and joint projects, the Humanities Center fosters a wide-ranging interdisciplinary exchange of ideas in an atmo-sphere of respect for diverse perspectives and expertise. An integral part of Northeastern University’s signature experiential liberal arts program, the Humanities Center offers various opportunities for engagement with art, literature, philosophy, history, and social and political formations, thereby strengthening the foundation from which to respond meaningfully to one another and the needs of our world. northeastern.edu/humanities

Lori Lefkovitz, Director, Northeastern Humanities Center; Ruderman Professor of Jewish Studies and Professor of English; Director, Jewish Studies Program, College of Social Sciences and HumanitiesTimothy Cresswell, Associate Director for Public Humanities, Northeastern Humanities Center; Associate Dean of Faculty Affairs, Professor of History and International Affairs, College of Social Sciences and HumanitiesMeghan Brisson, Administrative Coordinator, Northeastern Humanities Center

Special Thanks to:Leslie Casey, Communications and Digital Strategy Manager, College of Social Sciences and Humanities

northeastern.edu/hac