March 17, 2009

Holocaust conference to focus on resisters, rescuers, refugees

Planned by the Greater Lafayette Holocaust Remembrance Conference Committee, this year's conference is titled "Resisters, Rescuers and Refugees."

Registration will begin at 1:30 p.m. March 29 in Purdue's Stewart Center, Room 214. The conference is free and open to the public.

Lafayette Mayor Tony Roswarski and West Lafayette Mayor John Dennis will open the event at 2 p.m. in Stewart Center, Room 214, with proclamations. They will be followed by a ceremonial prayer by Rabbi Audrey Pollack of Temple Israel, candle lighting by survivors and children and grandchildren of survivors, and music by Brad Bodine and the St. Thomas Aquinas Singers.

 John Contreni, dean of the College of Liberal Arts, will provide the opening remarks at 2:20 p.m.

At 2:40 p.m., Peter Fritzsche, professor of history at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, will talk about "Everywhere friends are professing themselves for Hitler: Why was there so little resistance to the Third Reich?” in Stewart Center, Room 214. Fritzsche is serving as the third annual Rabbi Gedalyah Engel Lecturer, which is named in honor of the conference founder. Joseph Haberer, professor emeritus of political science at Purdue, will introduce Fritzsche.

Other conference events, which also are free and open to the public unless otherwise noted, include:

* March 29. 3:40 p.m. Stewart Center, Room 214. The Jewish partisans of World War II. Mitch Braff, executive director of the Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation in San Francisco. Introduction by Sarah Powley, educator and English department chair at McCutcheon High School in Lafayette.

* March 29. 6 p.m. Purdue Memorial Union, second floor, Anniversary Drawing Room. Supper with conference speakers and conference committee. Open to the public. Cost is $18 for adults and $3 for students. RSVP is required by March 23. For information, call 765-463-1980.

* March 29. 7:30 p.m. Purdue's Krannert Auditorium. "Home Again? German Jews Return." Survivors Fritz Cohen, professor emeritus of German at Purdue, Johanna Gartenhaus and Haberer. Kevin Gartenhaus will serve as moderator.

* March 30. 9 a.m. Hillel Foundation, 912 W. State St., West Lafayette. University Religious Leaders Breakfast, a conversation with Fritzsche and Braff.

* March 30. 4:30 p.m. St. Thomas Aquinas, Room 3, 535 W. State St., West Lafayette. "Teaching About Jewish Partisans During World War II," a workshop for middle school and high school teachers. Braff will be the instructor, and Powley will be the chair. Registration required. For information, visit https://www.glhrc.org. Roger and Cathy Bauer of Subway Inc. of Lafayette will donate box dinners for the workshop.

*March 30. 6 p.m. West Lafayette Public Library, 208 W. Columbia St., West Lafayette. Film series in cooperation with the Greater Lafayette Holocaust Remembrance Conference. "Sophie Scholl – The Final Days."

* March 31. 7 p.m. Hillel Foundation, 912 W. State St., West Lafayette. Film, "Life is Beautiful."

* April 1. 6 p.m. West Lafayette Public Library, 208 W. Columbia St., West Lafayette. Film series in cooperation with the Greater Lafayette Holocaust Remembrance Conference. "The Counterfeiters."

* April 2. 6 p.m. West Lafayette Public Library, 208 W. Columbia St., West Lafayette. Film series in cooperation with the Greater Lafayette Holocaust Remembrance Conference. "The Uprising."

* April 27. 7 p.m. McCutcheon High School, 4951 U.S. Highway 231 South, Lafayette. With the cooperation of the McCutcheon High School Drama Department: "Life in a Jar," the story of Irena Sendler, a Polish Catholic woman who rescued Jewish children from the Warsaw Ghetto during World War II.

* April 28. TBA. Children's Museum, 3000 N. Meridian St, Indianapolis. Again with the cooperation of the McCutcheon High School Drama Department: "Life in a Jar" repeated. Admission to the museum is $9.50 for children ages 2-17, $14.50 for adults and $13.50 for seniors over 60.

The conference is sponsored at Purdue by the offices of the Provost and Human Relations, colleges of Education and Liberal Arts, James F. Ackerman Center for Democratic Citizenship, Department of History and the Jewish Studies Program.

Additional sponsors are the Diocese of Lafayette and St. Thomas Aquinas Center, Hillel Foundation, Jewish Federation of Greater Lafayette, the Sons of Abraham Congregation, Temple Israel, Tippecanoe County Religious Leaders, University Religious Leaders Association, the West Lafayette Human Relations Commission and the Lowell Milken Center.

Funding for the conference is from Eli Lilly and Co., the Indiana Humanities Council, CityBus of Greater Lafayette, along with endowments from the Sam and Edith Chosnek Memorial Fund and the Irving and Shirley Kaplan Fund.

Holocaust Remembrance Day, known in Hebrew as Yom HaShoah, will be observed this year on April 21. Translated from Hebrew, the phrase means day of catastrophe.

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

Sources: Susan Prohofsky, conference co-chair, 765-463-1980, sue@glhrc.org  

Sarah Powley, conference co-chair, McCutcheon High School English Department, 765-474-1488, spowley@tsc.k12.in.us

Carol Bloom, conference publicity chair, 765-496-7998, cbloom@purdue.edu

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

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