CU’s 2012 Holocaust Awareness Week will also adopt the UN’s theme this year which will focus on the “Children and the Holocaust.” Some children managed to survive in hiding, others fled to safe havens before it was too late, while many others suffered medical experiments or were sent to the gas chambers immediately upon arriving at the death camps. Highlighting the impact of mass violence on children, this theme has important implications for the 21st century. CU’s keynote lecture, “Hidden Children of the Holocaust” on Thursday, January 26 at 7:00 pm in the University Memorial Center room 235 features University of California Davis professor and author Diane Wolf.

Anne Frank has largely shaped the image of the Jewish child hiding from the Nazis, yet her experience was not the norm. Wolf’s keynote lecture is based on her book “Beyond Anne Frank: Hidden Children and Postwar Families in Holland” in which she draws on interviews with seventy Jewish men and women who, as children, were placed in non-Jewish families during the Nazi occupation of Holland. Wolf analyzes the experiences of these Holocaust survivors, which were diametrically opposed to those who suffered in concentration camps. Although the war years were tolerable for most of these children, it was the end of the war that marked the beginning of a traumatic time, especially if parents survived, leading many of those interviewed to remark, “My war began after the war.”

Diane Wolf, professor of Sociology and director of Jewish Studies at UC Davis

Diane Wolf is professor of Sociology and director of Jewish Studies at the University of California, Davis. She has authored “Beyond Anne Frank: Hidden Children and Postwar Families in Holland,” “From Auschwitz to Ithaca: The Transnational Journey of Jake Geldwert” and “Factory Daughters“. She edited “Feminist Dilemmas in Fieldwork” and co-edited “Sociology Confronts the Holocaust: Memories and Identities in Jewish Diasporas“. Her current research focuses on American cultural memory of the Holocaust, children of Holocaust survivors, and comparing the religious practices of secular Jews in both Israel and the U.S.

CU’s 28th Annual Holocaust Awareness Week includes film screenings, presentations  and testimonies from survivors. The schedule of events begins Tuesday, January 24:

Tuesday, January 24 at 7:00 pm
Film screening of “Mephisto”
Boulder JCC, 3800 Kalmia Avenue
$10 at the door**
This Oscar-winning political drama is based on Klaus Mann’s 1936 novel of the same name. In early 1930s Germany, ambitious actor Hendrik Hofgen cares little for politics and lives only for his art. But when the Nazis rise to power, Hofgen seizes the opportunity to perform propaganda plays for the Reich, gaining popularity and fame. But can he survive in a world where the ideology of evil is the ultimate drama?
**Presented by Menorah: Arts, Culture and Education at the Boulder Jewish Community Center. Visit www.boulderjcc.org for details.

The House on August Street by Aylelet Bargur

Wednesday, January 25 at 7:00 pm
“The House on August Street” with post-film discussion by Diane Wolf, professor of Sociology and director of Jewish Studies at UC Davis
University of Colorado Boulder, Atlas Building Room 100
**Free and open to the public, RSVPs are required as space is limited, email Nicholas.Underwood@colorado.edu or call 303.492.7143
From award-winning director Aylelet Bargur, “The House on August Street” tells the remarkable, unknown story of Beate Berger, a German Jew who single-handedly and with great resolve and vision rescued over 100 children during the Holocaust, smuggling them from Berlin to Palestine in the 1930s. Berger, founder of the House of Love Children’s Home (Beith Ahawah Kinderheim), Berlin’s first home for poor Jewish children, was quick to recognize the Nazi threat and resolved to protect the 120 children under her care. Raising the funds and making all the clandestine arrangements, Berger brought groups of children into Palestine from Germany from 1934 to 1939. The Beit Ahava orphanage in Haifa remains open today.

Thursday, January 26 at 7:00 pm
Keynote lecture “Hidden Children of the Holocaust” with Diane Wolf, author and professor of Sociology and director of Jewish Studies at UC Davis
University of Colorado Boulder, University Memorial Center room 235
Anne Frank largely shaped the image of the Jewish child hiding from the Nazis, yet her experience was not the norm. Drawing on interviews with seventy Jewish men and women who, as children, were placed in non-Jewish families during the Nazi occupation of Holland, Wolf analyzes the experiences of these Holocaust survivors which were diametrically opposed to the those who suffered in concentration camps. Although the war years were tolerable for most of these children, it was the end of the war that marked the beginning of a traumatic time, especially if parents survived, leading many of those interviewed here to remark, “My war began after the war.”

Friday, January 27 at 10:30 am and 1:30 pm
Reading of the names and survivor testimonies
University of Colorado Boulder
University Memorial Center room 235
CU’s Holocaust Awareness Week concludes with the reading of Holocaust victims’ names called the Litany of the Martyrs which will begin at 10:00 am in the UMC. Testimonies from local Holocaust survivors will be at 10:30 am and 1:30 pm.

A complete schedule of events can be found at www.hillelcolorado.org and http://jewishstudies.colorado.edu.

Holocaust Awareness Week is presented by the University of Colorado Boulder’s Hillel and co-sponsored by the Program in Jewish Studies at CU, Menorah: Arts, Culture and Education at the Boulder JCC, the Cultural Events Board at CU, and Movers: Art and Conscience community collaborative series.

Diane Wolf’s visit has been made possible by generous donors to CU’s Hillel, the Program in Jewish Studies and the Legacy Heritage Jewish Studies Project, directed by the Association for Jewish Studies (AJS). Support for the Legacy Heritage Jewish Studies Project is generously provided by Legacy Heritage Fund Limited.

Her talk, “The Black Book: Exile and Activism in 1940s Mexico City,” is part of Movers: Art and Conscience and Menorah’s exploration of persecuted artists in exile.

Merfish will offer a look at the site of the most extensive discussions of the Jewish Question in the history of German Communism: Mexico City circa 1943, where a group of German-speaking leftist intellectuals engaged in anti-Fascist activism in exile. There they collaborated with local artist group the “People’s Graphic Workshop” and formed “The Free Book,” the most important leftist exile press of the period.

Merfish’s work centers on the World War II activities of the Taller de Grafica Popular (People’s Graphic Workshop, or TGP), founded in Mexico City in 1937, and the interactions of its members with a group of German-speaking leftist intellectuals who fled Fascist Europe for Mexico City.  The most famous of those intellectuals are Hannes Meyer, who had been the director of the Bauhaus, and Anna Seghers, the German-Jewish novelist who published the first account of the camps in her novel “The Seventh Cross,” which was a best-seller in the US and in Mexico.

In her talk she’ll focus on the book “Libro negro del terror nazi in europa” (The Black Book of Nazi Terror in Europe) published as a collaboration between this network of leftist German intellectuals and the TGP. Within the scope of one lecture, the book can be used as a window into these communities and the questions they faced in exile. One image in the book, Leopoldo Mendez’s “Deportation to Death,” has been described as the first Holocaust image to be created outside of Europe.

An elder of the village, Vysni Apsa, ca. 1945-38 ©Mara Vishniac Kohn, courtesy of International Center of Photography

The Movers: Art and Conscience collaborative together with Congregation Har HaShem, the Mizel Museum and the Program in Jewish Studies at CU Boulder are excited to offer an evening with Maya Benton, the director of the Roman Vishniac archive and adjunct curator at the International Center of Photography (ICP) in New York on Thursday, December 1 at 7:30 PM at Congregation Har HaShem located at 3950 Baseline Road, Boulder.

Roman Vishniac was a Russian-American photographer and biologist who was best known for his dramatic photographs of Jewish life in Central and Eastern Europe before the Holocaust. His photographs shape our memory of that vanished world, yet only a small selection of his images – a very small fraction of his life’s work – has ever been printed or published. The recent donation of Vishniac’s entire estate to the International Center of Photography (ICP) in New York includes tens of thousands of negatives, contact sheets, prints and a lifetime of personal correspondence and ephemera.

Curator Maya Benton will be discussing the process of establishing the Vishniac archive at ICP, and will present recently discovered work, including never-before-seen moving film footage, images of Zionist agrarian training camps in Holland before World War II and Displaced Persons camps in Berlin following the War, photographs made in America in the 1940s documenting the work of Jewish social service organizations, as well as a large selection of contact sheets, negatives, and never-before-seen work from Central and Eastern Europe.  She will also discuss the influence of

European modernism and avant-garde movements on his most accomplished work. Benton will also address new research focusing on the commission of Vishniac’s photographs by the Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), repositioning Vishniac within the broader context of commissioned social documentary photography in the 1930s, and revealing a profoundly versatile artist who belongs firmly in the canon of the great photographers of the 20th century.

Featured in a New York Times profile, Maya Benton is director of the Roman Vishniac archive and adjunct curator at the International Center of Photography (ICP).  An A.B.D. at Courtauld Institute of Art, her research focuses on documentary photographs of Jewish life in Central and Eastern Europe, Israeli contemporary photography and video art, and more broadly, Jewish visual culture and vernacular photography.

Benton has recently curated exhibitions on the work of photojournalist Ruth Gruber, a series on contemporary Israeli video art, and is currently establishing a major public archive of Roman Vishniac’s work at ICP, in partnership with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in D.C.  This work will culminate in a traveling retrospective and catalog on Vishniac, set to open at ICP in 2013. The archive and exhibition have recently been awarded a lead National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) grant.  A slide show of Vishniac’s photography is available online.

Additional images from the Vishniac archive are available for publication in association with the promotion of this event.  Please contact Jamie Polliard at Jamie.Polliard@colorado.edu or via phone at 303.492.7143 for more information.

The first film to be shot on location at Auschwitz, ”Triumph of the Spirit”  is based on the true story of Salamo Arouch, a Greek-Jewish boxer.  Arrested while attempting to help his family and friends escape the Nazi juggernaut, Arouch (played by Willem Dafoe) is imprisoned in Auschwitz and slated for death. He manages to survive–and to serve as an inspiration for his fellow inmates–by literally boxing for his life. He does this at the orders of his SS captors, who gamble on the outcome of Arouch’s bouts. With each victory, Arouch is rewarded with extra bread rations, which he passes on to his family.

Menorah presents “Triumph of the Spirit” on Saturday, November 19 at 7:00 pm at the Boulder JCC as part of “Movers: Art and Conscience.”  The film examines a crisis of conscience for Arouch, a man who faces a moral dilemma when forced to use the art of boxing as a means of survival. He knows that if he refuses to fight his fellow prisoners, his family will be punished; if he wins, he will be given extra rations which he can share with them; if he loses, he will be sent to the gas chamber.

The film was also chosen in anticipation of OPA: Celebrating the Jews of Greece on December 3 at the Boulder JCC, an evening that includes a concert, a Greek feast and a short film.

The Greek Jewish middleweight boxing champ of the Balkans , Arouch survived his two-year internment in the camp by winning more than 200 bouts arranged by his Nazi captors. Arouch, who went on to run a shipping firm in Israel, served as a consultant  on the film.

In its review, The New York Times praised the performances of Dafoe (“harrowingly good”) and Robert Loggia (“a memorably physical performance”). Director Robert Young, who is Jewish, manages to take a grim story and make it compelling rather than repellent.

Join us as we discuss the film and its provacative title – a reference to and repudiation of the notorious Nazi propaganda film by Leni Riefensthal, “Triumph of the Will.”

Professor David Shneer, Singer Chair in Jewish History at CU. (Photo by Glenn Asakawa/University of Colorado)

Although World War II is one of the most documented conflicts of the twentieth century, western audiences have had little exposure to Soviet photographs of that war. Through Soviet Jewish Eyes, based on David Shneer’s critically acclaimed book of the same title, presents over sixty images that are about Soviet aesthetics and narratives of World War II as much as they are about the Soviet photojournalists who made those images. The majority of Soviet photojournalists were Jewish, coming from mid-sized towns in southern Russia, and raised on the cusp of modernity. In Russia, throughout the 19^th century, most Jews, unless granted special permits, were forced to live in prescribed regions of the Russian provinces, known as the pale of settlement, outside of major metropolitan centers such as Moscow and St. Petersburg. Photography was a new, risky, and entrepreneurial profession, which allowed Jews who came from afar to sustain themselves in St. Petersburg, the capital of tsarist Russia, and then in Moscow, the capital of the Soviet Union.  There, they thrived as artists and documentarians and entered an urban sphere of art, politics, and culture, previously unavailable to members of their socio-economic, cultural, and religious spheres.

Dmitrii Baltermants, Russian (1912-1990), Grief, 1942; gelatin silver print, circa 1990; 36 ½ x 43 5/8 inches; Loan from the Collection of Teresa and Paul Harbaugh; Image courtesy of Michael Mattis; © Estate of Dmitrii Baltermant

The exhibition presents 58 photographs, printed at numerous scales over six decades, by the most important Soviet photojournalists including Evgenii Khaldei, Georgii Zelma, and Dmitrii Baltermants. These photographers took aesthetically arresting war images and were also the first to document the liberation of Nazi atrocity sites, three years before better-known photographers like Margaret Bourke White and Lee Miller chronicled the liberation of concentration camps in Germany.

The photographs featured in the exhibition span the Nazi-Soviet war, from June 22, 1941 until V-Day on May 9, 1945, with an opening section that contextualizes the wartime images within the Constructivist and Socialist Realist traditions of Soviet photography in the 1920s and 1930s.  Canonical images appear side by side with photographs that have never before been exhibited.

The exhibition also highlights the central challenge to avant-garde aesthetics and to “art” itself that was posed by the war and by Soviet culture of the time. In this challenge, social and political purpose—as expressed through documentary photography, superseded or in some cases merged with avant-garde modernist sensibilities to create a new aesthetic—one that has continued to echo across art history and influenced future art movements of the 20^th century and beyond.

In addition, Through Soviet Jewish Eyes places canonical images side-by-side with photographs that the curators found in the photographers’ archives currently housed in private collections and that have never before been exhibited to the public. The exhibition also draws attention to the large number of Soviet photographers who were Jewish and explores aspects of what this religious and cultural identity might have meant for the photographers when confronting the war and Nazi atrocities through Soviet and Jewish eyes.

The exhibition also features three vitrines of archival materials, including contact sheets, glass negatives, scrap books, diaries, Soviet publications, and the photographers’ personal book maquettes.

THROUGH SOVIET JEWISH EYES: Photography, War, and the Holocaust

curated by David Shneer, Director, Program in Jewish Studies and Professor of History, University of Colorado and Lisa Tamiris Becker, Director, CU Art Museum

September 8-October 22, 2011

Opening Reception, September 7, 2011, 6 – 8 PM ∙ CU Art Museum, University of Colorado Boulder

Lecture and presentation with Professor David Shneer

Thursday, September 8, 7:30 PM Colorado Photographic Art Center, Belmar Center, Lakewood, Colorado

Lecture and exhibition tour with Professor David Shneer

Thursday, September 15, 7 PM ∙ CU Art Museum, University of Colorado Boulder

Author I.L. Peretz (Photo: Wikipedia)

The rich history of Yiddish literature will be examined by three University of Colorado scholars during Menorah’s final Sunday Symposium, which takes place from 2:00 pm – 6:00 pm on April 3 at the Boulder JCC. The program is part of  a year-long, collaborative series exploring language and literature, Movers: Do You Speak Jewish?

Professor David Shneer, director of the University of Colorado Program in Jewish Studies, will deliver the keynote lecture providing an historical overview of Yiddish writing, which is as unique as it is influential. Professor Robby Adler Peckerar will speak on Sholem Aleichem and Professor Zilla Goodman will discuss the work of I.L. Peretz. The wrap-up conversation with all three professors will focus on Yiddish today and tomorrow.

The afternoon also includes the flavor of Eastern Europe with Old World refreshments. The cost is $18 in advance; $22 at the door.

Although Yiddish literature dates from 1300, it culminated in the period from 1864 to 1939, inspired by modernization and then severely diminished by the Holocaust. It arose in Europe out of a tradition that gave precedence to Hebrew prayers, commentaries, and scripture. As the vernacular expression of Ashkenazic Jews, Yiddish literature was often intended for ordinary readers rather than for the highly educated. Because few women learned Hebrew, their literacy was in Yiddish, and they became the primary audience for some forms of Yiddish literature.

Author Sholem Aleichem (Photo: Wikipedia)

Modern Yiddish literature (1864 to the present) embraced Yiddish as the vehicle for a European literature like any other. Mass emigration to North America (especially after the political turmoil and pogroms of 1881) spread Yiddish poetry, drama, and fiction to the New World; emigration to Palestine (and later Israel) continued the literary tradition there.

Yiddish literature and culture have been in decline since the Nazi genocide that destroyed its major centers in Europe. Oppression also cut short the Yiddish tradition in the Soviet Union, while assimilation has curtailed the role of Yiddish in the United States and Canada. Since the 1980s, however, Yiddish literature has received new attention in North America, Europe, and Israel, and there have been many heartening efforts to revive Yiddish culture through klezmer music, translations, and university studies. Centers of secular Yiddish culture exist in New York, Montreal, Paris, Tel Aviv, and elsewhere. Yiddish literature has also found indirect expression in American and British fiction written in English.

Reservations are appreciated but not required: Call Kathryn at 303-998-1021, or email kathryn@boulderjcc.org

Jewish American literature has chronicled and paralleled the Jewish American experience. It depicts the struggles of immigrant life, the stable yet alienated middle-class existence that followed, and finally the unique challenges of cultural acceptance: assimilation and the reawakening of tradition.

Jewish writers whose work holds a prominent and influential place in 20^th century American literature include Abraham Cahan, Henry Roth, Bernard Malamud, Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, Cynthia Ozick, Norman Mailer, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Chaim Potok, Herman Wouk, and J.D. Salinger.

DU Professor Adam Rovner will deliver a keynote overview that focuses on the idea that Jewish American literature is an immigrant literature and is now inevitably in decline (the Howe position) or constantly renewing itself (current cheerleading position).

Retired CU Professor Joel Salzberg will provide a counterpoint position on Professor Rovner’s thesis. There will be two break-out sessions following that will look more closely at Philip Roth and more contemporary writers.

The symposium is Sunday, February 13, 2:00 – 6:00 pm at the Boulder JCC.  Admission is $18 in advance; $22 at the door. Refreshments will be served.

The Week of Jewish Culture concludes with two events in Denver that are also part of Czech Point Denver, a festival celebrating Czech cultural arts with programs hosted by Denver and Boulder non-profit arts and cultural organizations, and educational institutions throughout January and February. This cooperative project, led by Opera Colorado, will include classical music, theater, visual arts, film and multimedia experiences.

Complete details can be found at www.colorado.edu/jewishstudies. All events are free and open to the public but RSVP’s are suggested as space is limited. For additional questions, contact the Program in Jewish Studies at 303.492.7143 or via email at Jamie.Polliard@colorado.edu.

In Front of the Iron Curtain: Yiddish in East Germany
with David Shneer
Tuesday, January 18 @ 7 PM

Atlas 100 on the CU-Boulder Campus
Over the course of her 35 years as the Yiddish diva of the Communist world, Lin Jaldati sang for large official Stalin-era concerts and inspired Yiddish folk music collectives in East German factories. Associate  professor of history and director if the Program in Jewish Studies,  David Shneer , will present the life story of Jaldati and her daughter, Jalda Rebling, who picked up where her mother left off, and suggest what it says about Jewish life in Europe, in the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust and today. Click here for related article.

Kafka, Sports, and Czechoslovakian Jewish Identity
with Professor Robert Adler Peckerar
Wednesday, January 19 @ 7:30 PM
SOBO 151
151 S. Broadway, Denver

“…snad teď footbal vůbec přestane… [perhaps now, soccer is really over]“

With these enigmatic words, famed soccer fan Franz Kafka ended a 1923 postcard to his brother-in-law after reading a series of articles railing against the fastest growing sport in the world. Join Robert Adler Peckerar, assistant professor of Jewish Literature and Culture at CU-Boulder, for an interactive evening that examines the phenomenon of Jewish soccer in central and eastern Europe at the start of the last century – its controversies, politics, and importance in understanding the birth of a new European Jewish culture. And do it while enjoying a refreshing Czechoslovakian beverage in Denver’s favorite Czech sports bar. (21 ID required). This event is part of a community-wide series celebrating Czech culture, Czech Point Denver (www.czechpointdenver.com).

Czech Insights from Music and Literature
Opera Colorado with Betsy Schwarm and Davide Stimilli
Tuesday, January 25 @ 7 PM
Tattered Cover LoDo
1628 16th Street, Denver
From Dvořák to Kafka, Czech cultural figures have had a lasting impact on the arts. In this program with live music, we’ll consider the world-view of three generations of Czech artists and how they have affected the arts even beyond their own borders. Includes presentations by Metro State College music historian, Betsy Schwarm, and associate professor of German and Comparative Literature, Humanities and Jewish Studies, Davide Stimilli. Young Artists from Opera Colorado will also perform. This event is part of a community-wide series celebrating Czech culture, Czech Point Denver (www.czechpointdenver.com)