Holocaust Remembrance Conference to begin March 26

The conference will be held at various locations on the Purdue University campus and the surrounding community. The Greater Lafayette Holocaust Remembrance Committee is sponsoring the event.

World War II officially ended May 8, 1945, when the Allies announced the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany. Although it was months later before all of Germany was occupied and the ethnic atrocities there ended, that date also marks the informal end of the Holocaust, said conference chair Susan Prohofsky.

"It's important that we do everything we can to remember what happened during the Holocaust," Prohofsky said. "The lessons of the Holocaust are timeless, but violence continues throughout the world. Both genocide and anti-Semitism are rampant around the globe even to this day. We need to encourage world leaders to come together and work toward peace, not fan the flames of hatred and violence."

The conference, which will focus on genocide around the world, begins with registration at 1 p.m. March 26 in Purdue's Stewart Center, Room 214.

Proclamations by Lafayette Mayor Tony Roswarski and West Lafayette Mayor Jan Mills will open the event, followed by welcoming remarks and ceremonial proceedings by Prohofsky; Gordon Mork, history professor; Rabbi Michael Rascoe; Stan Alexander; Brad Bodine and the St. Tom's Singers; and Dan Frank, Purdue's director of Jewish studies.

A schedule of other conference events, which are free and open to the public unless otherwise noted, is as follows:

• March 26. 2:15 p.m. Stewart Center, Room 214. Omer Bartov, history professor from Brown University, will present "The Holocaust as Leitmotif of the 20th Century." Introduction by George Horwich.

• March 26. 3:15 p.m. Stewart Center, Room 214. Howard Wolpe, director of the Africa Program of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, will present "Transcending Ethnicity: Peacebuilding Through Leadership Training." Introduction by Robert Melson.

• March 26. 4:15 p.m. Stewart Center, Room 214. Doris Fogel, a Holocaust survivor, will present "From Internment to Rescue to the American Dream."

• March 26. 5 p.m. Stewart Center, Room 214. Concurrent workshops. "Emmanuel Levinas: Useless Suffering" with members of the North American Levinas Society including professor Ann Astell, professor Sandor Goodhart, Octavian Gabor, Dara Hill, Kathryn Ludwig, Michael R. Michau, Sol Neely, Rebecca Nicholson-Weir and Monica Osborne; and "Conversations with the Speakers."

• March 26. 6:30 p.m. Hillel, 912 W. State St. West Lafayette. Supper. $10 donation for public; $3 donation for students.

• March 27. 9 a.m. Hillel. Breakfast and conversation with Bartov, Wolpe and Fogel for university religious leaders.

• March 27. 7 p.m. Purdue's Matthews Hall, Room 210. Roundtable discussion on "Genocide Around the World." Includes Purdue history professor Ray Dumett, moderator; Purdue philosophy professor Leonard Harris, "Genocide and Racism;" St. Thomas Aquinas Rev. James Barnett and Purdue political science professor Harry Targ, Guatemala and El Salvador;" Purdue history professor Charles Ingrao, "Kosovo;" Dumett, "Tragedy in the Sudan;" Kheang Un of the Northern Illinois University Political Science Department, "The Pol Pot Regime of Cambodia;" and Purdue political science professor Robert Melson, final comment.

• March 28. 7:30 p.m. St. Thomas Aquinas, 535 W. State St., West Lafayette. "Jewish-Catholic Relations: 40 Years After Nostra Aetate." Purdue philosophy professor Don Mitchell will moderate. Participants are professor Tom Ryba, theologian in residence at Notre Dame; and Rabbi Gary M. Bretton-Granatoor, director of interfaith affairs of the Anti-Defamation League in New York City. Respondent is Sandor Goodhart of Purdue's English department.

• March 29. 9 a.m. Happy Hollow School, West Lafayette. Sam Harris, survivor, author and director of the Illinois Holocaust Foundation, will present "Sammy: Child Survivor of the Holocaust."

• March 29. 12:30 p.m. Sons of Abraham, 661 N. Seventh St., Lafayette. Lunch with Bretton-Granatoor. $10 donation for public; $3 for students.

• March 29. 7 p.m. Purdue's Wetherill Hall, Room 200. Video, "Berga," followed by discussion that includes panel of World War II veterans George Horwich, Arne Kvaalen and Ernest McDaniel. Leon Trachtman, who was interred at Berga, also will talk about the film.

• March 30. 7 p.m. Hillel, 912 W. State St., West Lafayette. Movie, "Hotel Rwanda."

• March 31 and April 1. 7 and 9:30 p.m. Purdue's Stewart Center, Fowler Hall. "Paperclips." Free showing prior to Purdue Student Union Board's feature film.

• April 1. 8 p.m. Temple Israel, 620 Cumberland Ave., West Lafayette. Scenes from "The Diary of Anne Frank" by the Lafayette Civic Theater Players and "Cabaret" by Lafayette Klezmorim.

Holocaust Remembrance Day, known in Hebrew as Yom HaShoah, will be observed this year on April 25. Translated from Hebrew, the phrase means Day of Catastrophe.

The conference is sponsored at Purdue by the Office of the Provost, the Office of Human Relations, the College of Education, the College of Liberal Arts, the Department of History and the Jewish Studies Program.

Additional sponsors are the Diocese of Lafayette and the St. Thomas Aquinas Center; the Hillel Foundation and Jewish Federation of Greater Lafayette; Tippecanoe County Religious Leaders; University Religious Leaders; Congregation Sons of Abraham; and Temple Israel.

Writer: Christy Jones, (765) 494-1089, christyjones@purdue.edu

Source: Susan Prohofsky, sue@glhrc.org

Purdue News Service: (765) 494-2096; purduenews@purdue.edu

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