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LECTURES & MOVIE EVENTS

Open to the public and free of charge, these events investigate varying issues surrounding the Holocaust. Events are ongoing throughout the year.

SEMESTER: Spring 2008
 
Film Screening
NAME:  Classic Yiddish Films - Screening 1 of 2
LOCATION:  Library Lower Level, Room 14 1:00 pm
DATE:  2/3/2008
DESCRIPTION:  YIDL MITN FIDDLE (Yiddle With a Fiddle)
The basic themes that made MGM'S great musicals of the 1940's and 50's so irresistible are found in this classic pre-­WWII gem of a Polish / Yiddish film starring the irrepressible Molly Picon. Can a little town girl, poor and unknown, make her way to stardom in the big city? Can true love really triumph in a cold, cruel world? Don't miss this piquant prequel to Barbara Streisand's stunning success in Yentl. A genuine charmer!

Film to be followed a discussion led by Rabbi H. Joseph Simckes
 
Exhibition Opening
NAME:  DEFYING THE DEVIL: CHRISTIAN CLERGY WHO SAVED JEWS DURING THE HOLOCAUST
LOCATION:  Student Union, 7:00 pm
DATE:  2/26/2008
DESCRIPTION:  Indifference was the commonest reaction of the masses of European non-Jewish citizens witnessing the Nazi crimes committed against the Jewish populations in their midst. But did doctors support Hitler? What about university professors? Did the clergy support Hitler?   The reality is that the majority of the European Christian clergy supported, remained indifferent or feared that open criticism of the genocide would bring down the wrath of the Nazis on them. At the same time, there were clergy men and women who felt compelled by the religious call to assist others in need. Some actually took Jewish refugees by their hands and found shelter for them, feeding them and offering them hope; others issued false baptismal certificates, or pressed other fellow clergy people and government officials to save Jews from certain death. Some of these clergy even paid with their own lives for their courageous deeds.   Our exhibit will honor only a few of these outstanding individuals. We have intentionally chosen clergy from several Christian denominations, pointing out the extent of their courageous efforts manifested throughout Nazi occupied Europe.
 
Lecture
NAME:  Blood to Remember: American Poets on the Holocaust
LOCATION:  Library Lower Level, Room 14 1:00 pm
DATE:  3/9/2008
DESCRIPTION:  The sacred duty of Holocaust remembrance – commemorating the dead, honoring the living, and posing the pertinent theological, ethical, and political questions generated by the Holocaust – is the substance of Charles Fishman’s compelling collection of American Holocaust poetry. Fishman successfully assembles works that render an historically remote and often painfully resisted subject in a manner that makes the catastrophe real.
In this twenty-first century edition of Blood to Remember, the two hundred and forty poets speak to us in nearly four hundred poems that are intoned, whispered, bellowed, sung, moaned. Theirs is the response of American poets to the Holocaust, and while it is often a “second generation” response, the voices of survivors still resound in these pages, as do the stunned outcries and barely muffled sobs of others, who though neither survivors of the Shoah nor members of their families, must live forever in its aftermath.

Charles Ades Fishman, Lecturer
 
Film Screening
NAME:  Classic Yiddish Films - Screening 2 of 2
LOCATION:  Library Lower Level, Room 14 1:00 pm
DATE:  3/23/2008
DESCRIPTION:  "THE DYBBUK" (The Haunting Spirit)
The film, "THE EXORCIST", took American cinema by storm and remains today a modern classic. It echoes the gripping motifs and shocking conflicts of body and spirit, good and evil, first presented in Anski's dark tale of a young Jewish bride whose physical being was infiltrated by the spiritual presence of a "Dybbuk", the ghost of her deceased true love. The exorcism scene as performed by rabbinic authorities in this pre-WWI in Polish / Yiddish film is considered by many even more haunting than that shot in "The Exorcist".

Film to be followed a discussion led by Rabbi H. Joseph Simckes
 
Passover Seder
NAME:  Intergenerational Holocaust Freedom Seder
LOCATION:  Queensborough Community College Student Union
DATE:  4/13/2008
DESCRIPTION:  With Rabbi Charles Agin and Cantor Susan Agin

1946. World War I has just ended.

Six million Jews have been destroyed.

Passover is approaching.

What can you possibly do to celebrate Passover, a holiday known for thousands of years as the Celebration of Redemption from Slavery?

Rabbi Abraham Klausner, a Chaplain serving with the U.S. Third Army, had the answer and as a result of his brilliance and creativity he produced The Survivor’s Hagaddah.

Join us in conducting this most unique Seder that was celebrated in the DP camps of Europe.

Admission $5.00 covers cost of Hagaddah and a Seder meal. RESERVATIONS REQUIRED.

Bring your child or grandchild and admission is free.
 
Workshop
NAME:  Genealogy Workshop - How to Research and Document Your Family History
LOCATION:  Holocaust Center, Library Lower Level Room 30
DATE:  5/4/2008
DESCRIPTION:  The vast majority of our Jewish ancestors came to the United States during one of two great migrations; German Jews during the period 1820 – 1880 and a larger migration of Eastern European Jews between 1880 and the early1920’s. Starting with information that you know about yourself and your immediate family, our goal is to rediscover our ancestor’s history from the time our family came to the United States as well as trying to go back to the “old country”. We will also discuss resources available to assist in trying to find information on family members that did not come to America and may have been lost during the Holocaust. Using actual historical documents and photos from my family history as a guide, this course will provide participants with step by step basic information needed to start researching their own family tree.

Some of the topics covered will include:
Naming practices
Vital records
Federal and state census reports
Passenger manifest records
Naturalization documents
Holocaust resources
Genealogy and your computer


Workshop led by: Nolan Altman Coordinator, JewishGen Holocaust Database
 
Lecture
NAME:  Where was God during the Holocaust?
LOCATION:  Library Lower Level, Room 14 1:00 pm
DATE:  5/18/2008
DESCRIPTION:  Where was God during the Holocaust? How could 6,000,000 of ‘His chosen people” be exterminated? These eternal questions have emerged from the Holocaust and despite our intellectual and spiritual efforts we have not found an answer. Judaism and Christianity traditionally have taught that God is omnipotent (all powerful), omniscient (all knowing) and Omni benevolent (all good). Yet, these claims are in jarring contrast with the fact that there is much evil in the world. Perhaps the most difficult question that monotheists have confronted is how can we reconcile the existence of this view of God with the existence of evil? This question becomes even more acute when we study the Holocaust. The Holocaust not only confronted humanity with an evil of unprecedented magnitude, but also shook the foundations of religious faith. This presentation will address the challenges that the Holocaust presented to organized Jewish religion and will explore some of the theological responses expressed during and after the Holocaust.

Rabbi Manes Kogan, Lecturer
 
A Program For Queens Holocaust Survivors
NAME:  BAGELS, BOOKS & TALK
LOCATION:  Kupferberg Center, Library Basement, Room 30
DATE:  5/30/2008
DESCRIPTION:  The Holocaust Resource Center and Archives and the Samuel Field YM-YWHA have joined together under a generous grant from UJA-Federation to expand and enrich the services available to Queens’ Holocaust survivors. The program will be housed at the Holocaust Resource Center at Queensborough Community College and dedicated to the concerns, resources and priorities of community’s Holocaust survivors.
Program schedule:
Fridays, 10:00 AM – 11:30 AM.
2/1/08
2/15/08
2/29/08
3/14/08
3/28/08
4/11/08
5/2/08
5/16/08
THIS PROGRAM IS FREE. IF INTERESTED IN ENROLLING, PLEASE CONTACT THE HOLOCAUST CENTER AT 718-281-5770.
 
Lecture
NAME:  Jasenovac and the Forgotten Holocaust in Yugoslavia
LOCATION:  Library Lower Level, Room 14 1:00 pm
DATE:  6/22/2008
DESCRIPTION:  As scholarship and awareness of the Holocaust grew rapidly in the 1990s, the history of the Holocaust in Yugoslavia and its most notorious system of camps at Jasenovac in Croatia, remained largely overlooked and little known. One reason for the general lack of knowledge of this chapter of the Holocaust is its complexity. Yugoslavia was partitioned into a dozen parts after its occupation by the Nazis in April 1941 and ruled by an array of Nazi collaborationist forces and regimes that included the Italians, Croats, Bosnian Muslims, Albanians, Hungarians, Bulgarians, Yugoslav Volkdeutscher, Serbian fascists and the Mufti of Jerusalem. There also emerges the remarkable and little known story of survival and heroic military resistance by the Jews of Yugoslavia. But above all, the vast scale of the complex of Nazi and Croatian concentration camps throughout Yugoslavia and the enormity of the suffering it entailed, so little known even among those knowledgeable about other areas of the Holocaust.

Barry Lituchy, Lecturer
 
Please call (718) 281-5770 or email hrc@qcc.cuny.edu for more information
 
 
  Queensborough Community College, Bayside, NY 11364
Holocaust Resource Center and Archives
Phone: (718) 281-5770
Email: hrc@qcc.cuny.edu