Search for tag: "holocaust"

Czech-born Eva Aigner’s close-knit Orthodox family was shattered by Nazi forces when she was merely a child. After the deportation of her father to a slave labor camp, 7-year-old Eva Aigner was…

Born in Fulda, Germany, in 1932, Joe Hess was six years old when the massive assault on German Jews and their property known as Kristallnacht (“Night of Broken Glass”) took place.…

Laureen Nussbaum tells the story of a righteous German official during the Holocaust in this live presentation from the Memorial Union on the Oregon State University campus in Corvallis in 2022. …

Diana Galante Golden was born into a large Sephardic Jewish family in Rhodes, a region where 10,000 Sephardic Jews dwelled. In June 1944, the German occupation led to her family’s deportation,…

Miriam Kominkowska Greenstein (born Miriam Kominkowska in Sompolno, Poland) had limited avenues to safety as a Jew within Nazi-occupied Poland. Miriam’s community faced a number…

A survivor of Auschwitz who spent 18 months in hiding in the Netherlands, Chella Velt Meekcoms Kryszek (born Rochella “Chella” Velt in the Hague) devoted over 25 years of her life…

During 1943 the Germans occupied Denmark and made plans to deport Danish Jews to the death camps. During the night of September 30-October 1, however, thousands of Danes took part in transporting…

In 1944, at the age of ten, Eva Mozes, along with her family of Romanian Jews, was taken to Auschwitz. Her parents and two sisters perished there. She and her twin sister Miriam were spared, but only…

In 1944, 13-year-old Stephen (“Pista”) Nasser was deported to Auschwitz. Of the 21 members in his family of Hungarian Jews, he was to be the only survivor. Among those who died was his…

Survival: A talk by Marion Blumenthal Lazan, a child survivor of the Holocaust In the late 1930’s, the Blumenthal family escaped Nazi Germany and settled in The Netherlands. However, in…

The final program of our 27th Annual Holocaust Memorial Program at Oregon State University featured an individual who has been described as "the chronicler of the Polish Jews."…

Ursula Bacon was a wartime resident of the Shanghai ghetto, which at its peak was occupied by 20,000-25,000 European Jews. Although temporarily safe from the Nazis, these Jews were…

Born in Vienna, Jacques Bergman joined other Jewish children in being transported to the Netherlands -- out of harm's way, it was thought -- in 1939. In 1942, however, he was…

Ruth Kluger was born in Vienna in 1931. During the war, she was interned at several camps, including Auschwitz and Theresienstadt. Her memoir, Still Alive: A Holocaust Girlhood Remembered,…

Itka Zygmuntowicz lost her entire family at Auschwitz. She herself survived, came to the U.S. after liberation, raised a family, and became an award-winning writer and poet. In recent years…

Leslie Aigner, Czech by birth, moved to Budapest in 1943. In July 1944, he and two siblings were taken by cattle-car to Auschwitz. He was later transferred to Dachau, where he was liberated…

At the core of our annual program is the testimony of an individual who personally witnessed the horror that was the Holocaust. The speaker in 2001, Alter Wiener, was born in Poland. As a young…

In 1954, Walter Plywaski enrolled at Oregon State College (later, OSU). He had varied interests, and for a time he studied English literature under Bernard Malamud, before finally majoring…

As a child, Dr. Jack Terry, then known as Jakub Szabmacher, experienced the Holocaust in its full fury. He lost his parents, siblings, relatives, and friends. In the camps of Budzyn and Wieliczka, in…

Central to any Holocaust Memorial Program must be the testimony of some representative of those few who survived the genocide and are still today able to give testimony on what they saw and…

Thomas "Toivi" Blatt will discuss his experiences during World War II. Blatt endured many hardships during these years, particularly at Sobibor, an extermination camp where perhaps 250,000…

The White Rose consisted of a small number of friends, most of them medical students in the University of Hamburg, who dared to speak out against the Nazi regime during the war. Unlike other…

Almost seven decades after her death at Bergen-Belsen, Anne Frank remains the best known of the six million Jews who perished in the Holocaust, this owing to the diary that she kept while hiding in…

On April 21st, 2015, Thomas Buergenthal spoke to us in a double capacity: first, as a survivor of Auschwitz, whose experiences during the Holocaust are chronicled in his highly acclaimed memoir, A…

Eugene J. Fisher, Memoria Future: Remembering the Shoah for the Sake of Future Generations

Ruth Klüger was born in Vienna in 1931. During the war, she was interned at several camps, including Auschwitz and Theresienstadt. Her memoir, Still Alive: A Holocaust Girlhood Remembered , is…

Benjamin Madley, a postdoctoral fellow in History and Native American Studies at Dartmouth, is a young scholar who has already played a major role in genocide studies. He focuses on “frontier…

Literature by design has a complex and often vexed relation to the history from which it emerges and seeks to represent. In the case of the Holocaust, where the accurate representation of historical…

In the fall of 1943, the Germans decided to kill all Jews in the three camps of the Lublin District in Poland. This campaign of murder was given the euphemistic name of “Operation Harvest…

Barnet Hartston, Between Ancient Prejudice and Modern Propaganda: Reconsidering Antisemitism in Imperial Germany

Mark Wygoda, a professor of Zoology, heads the Department of Biology and Health Sciences at McNeese State University (Lake Charles, Louisiana). On May 2, he will discuss, and will illustrate with…

Mark Wygoda, a professor of Zoology, heads the Department of Biology and Health Sciences at McNeese State University (Lake Charles, Louisiana). On May 2, he will discuss, and will illustrate with…