Marek Edelman Dialogue Center to commemorate 70th anniversary of Litzmannstadt Ghetto liquidation

This year marks the 70th anniversary of the liquidation of the Litzmannstadt (i.e. Łódź) Ghetto, the second-largest ghetto (after the Warsaw Ghetto) established for Jews and Romani in German-occupied Poland. The Marek Edelman Dialogue Center will be hosting a commemoration of the ghetto's liquidation from August 28 - 31, 2014 in and near Łódź, Poland.

A total of 204,000 Jews passed through the Litzmannstadt Ghetto. Despite reverses in the war, the Germans persisted in liquidating the ghetto and were able to transport the remaining population to Auschwitz and Chełmno extermination camps, where most died. It was the last ghetto in Poland to be liquidated. It is believed that the last transport took place on August 29, 1944.

A full program of the commemorations can be found by clicking here. Registration is needed to take part in selected events and is available here.

USC Shoah Foundation seeking 2014-2015 Center Research Fellow

The USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research (CAGR) has invited senior scholars to apply for its 2014-2015 Center Research Fellow. Applications will be accepted from now until July 14, 2014.

The fellowship provides $30,000 support and will be awarded to an outstanding candidate from any discipline who will advance genocide research through the use of the Visual History Archive (VHA) of the USC Shoah Foundation and other USC resources. The incumbent will spend one semester in residence at the CAGR during the 2014-2015 academic year and will be expected to provide the Center with fresh research perspectives, play a role in Center activities, and to give a public talk during his or her stay.

For more information, please see the USC Shoah Foundation Call for Applications.pdf

The CAGR was launched in April 2014 and builds on the diverse and interdisciplinary genocide research programs established over the last several years at the University of Southern California to offer a unique research opportunity to students and scholars around the world.

In Memoriam. Fred Baron (1924-2014)

CHGS is sad to announce the loss of friend and Holocaust survivor, Fred Baron.


Fred Baron was born in Vienna in 1924. He was 15 when the German's annexed (Anschluss) Austria in 1938. Fred's father had died while his sister was sent to England as part of the Kindertransport in 1939. Meanwhile, he and his mother sought shelter and lived in hiding. In 1941 they managed to escape to Hungary. Fred was arrested in Hungary and imprisoned for a time while his mother was sent to an interment camp. In June 1944 he was deported to Auschwitz.

After time in various labor camps, he was liberated by the British Army at Bergen-Belsen; in terrible health he was taken to Sweden for medical care. At the hospital he met his future wife Judith, who was also a Holocaust survivor, and was reunited with his sister. He resettled in Minnesota in 1947, attracted to the large Swedish population.

With Judith he raised a family, started a successful business and was a great supporter of the community. He had a kind and gentle spirit and a very optimistic outlook on life. He spoke often about his experiences and generously supported Holocaust education.

Fred died at the age of 91 on May 23, 2014. He will be sorely missed.

Margot De Wilde: "I always knew I would survive"

By Jodi Elowitz





I met Margot De Wilde when I was working as the director of Holocaust education at the Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC). Margot had contacted me to make me aware that she was available to go out to schools to tell her story and would I be interested in helping her organize this. After meeting with her I knew that we would indeed work together, but I did not know at the time that we would become good friends.

Margot's story is one of resistance, tragedy, and resilience. Margot was an active member of the Jewish resistance under Nazi occupation of the Netherlands; she worked in the underground by delivering false passports and identification cards to Jews to aid them in leaving Holland. Margot and her husband Lo were arrested when attempting to escape using these underground papers via train to Switzerland. Both were then sent to Auschwitz.

Margot was assigned to the infamous Block 10 where she endured and survived the Nazi medical experiments that were performed in Auschwitz under the supervision of Dr. Josef Mengele. In a rare occurrence, Margot was made aware that Lo was in the camp in the sick barrack, which she could see from hers. On one occasion she was able to catch a glimpse of him. She often told me how surreal that moment was as she wondered to herself if she was actually married to the man she saw through the cracks, (a shadow of his former self) or if they would remain married after all they had been through. Lo died in Block 9 at Auschwitz in 1944.


I thought about Margot's time in Auschwitz often this past summer when I spent a week there for a summer institute on Polish Memory. I had a hard time standing in Block 10 listening to our guide tell us about the experiments that took place there, as I had known full well what Margot had been through, what she had told me. I tried to imagine what it must have been like for her to look out those windows, or the time she saw Lo that one and only time. Of course I could not. But I was able to hear Margot saying to me that she never gave up, she never for one moment thought she would not survive.
Margot always said it was her rebellious nature that helped her survive, that she never did what she was told or was expected to do. "Always the opposite" she would remark. Her rebellious spirit is what I loved best about Margot. We would discuss current events and offer up our solutions to the world's problems. On one occasion when I was bringing her to an event at the Weisman Art Museum on the University of Minnesota campus we discovered that the elevator in the parking ramp was not working, so we had to find a way to get her close to the door, given her inability to walk long distances. I decided the only way was to actually drive up to the front of the Weisman. In order to do this we had to illegally drive up onto campus over the walk bridge, swinging past Coffman Union on the campus sidewalks. She was completely delighted by this and we both laughed about it every time I came to pick her up.
Margot loved to speak to school groups. She felt that the children she spoke to became the ones she could not have of her own. Margot never turned down a speaking engagement.
I remember Margot called me after she had received documents from the Red Cross Tracing Service; I went over to see her and she showed them to me. She was so grateful to have them since she told me it proved her existence at the time, that what she and Lo went through was documented. It was all there. No one could dispute it.
Margot always said she was not bitter about what happened to her. She felt that she was put here on earth to do something and maybe bearing witness to the Holocaust was what she was meant to do. When she eventually had to stop speaking because of her health she told me she had no regrets. She had done all she could do and maybe it was time to rest. Margot did not fear death, she thought of it as a part of life, so although I will miss her I know she will always be with us. Her story will live on as will her spirit. I hope now she is getting the rest she so richly deserves.
Ruth Margot DeWilde's passed away on May 1, at the age of 92. To learn more about her you can visit her CHGS web page by clicking here.
Jodi Elowitz is the Outreach Coordinator for CHGS and the Program Coordinator for the European Studies Consortium. Elowitz is currently working on Holocaust memory in Poland and artistic representation of the Holocaust in animated short films.

The Past cannot remain Buried: Polish Memory in the film Ida

By Jodi Elowitz

Ida, directed by Pawel Pawlikowski, is a beautiful work of cinema, lovingly paying homage to other Polish filmmakers in his use of cinematography and black and white to convey a strong film about Poland's troubled past.



Like Aftermath, the other recent film about polish memory and the Holocaust, the main characters in Ida are looking for an answer to their own identities lost amongst the secrets of the past. Both films deal with the idea of memory and what the characters, and to an extent the viewers, think we know about history, and yet what is uncovered is far worse than what we can imagine.

In life there are many ways of dealing with the past. We can claim ignorance and refuse knowledge out of a sense of innocence or misunderstanding or we can tell ourselves many things to help us suppress memories too painful to recall. Days, weeks, months and years might go by, but finally when confronted with the truth, we can no longer hide and must reconcile who we were in the past with who we have become now. The film does this by examining the characters against the crossroads (symbolically) of Poland and its memory of the Holocaust, Stalinism, Catholic religion, Nationalism and Judaism.

There are many confessions and truths unveiled in Ida. Pawliskowski's decision to shoot in black and white gives the film the stark contrasts, using the dark and light to highlight the past and the present, the living and the dead, as well as issues of good and evil, right and wrong. Shadows and grey tones fall over the landscape and the faces of the characters to evoke beauty, sorrow, wonder and desperation.

The film is like a photograph found in a drawer, creating a sense of nostalgia not for the good old days but more towards the notion of putting things right. The fog of the past has been lifted on Poland and now with history unearthed they can find ways to live with the truth in order to move forward.

IDA opens at Uptown Theater on May 30th and Edina Cinema on June 6th.

To watch the trailer, please click here.

For more information on the film, please visit Music Box Films.

Yom HaShoah Commemoration

Sunday, April 27, 2014
7:00 PM

Temple of Aaron
616 S. Mississippi River Blvd.
St. Paul, MN 55116

Featuring voices of Twin Cities Holocaust Survivors, the annual Yom HaShoah Commemoration honors the memory of the six million Jews and other victims murdered in the Holocaust. As is tradition at Yom HaShoah, Holocaust survivors are invited to light candles in memory of the victims of the Holocaust.

The event is free of charge and open to the public. For more information, please e-mail susie@minndakjcrc.org.

Sponsors: the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas, Children of Holocaust Survivors Association in Minnesota (CHAIM), Temple of Aaron, the Minneapolis Jewish Federation, and the Jewish Federation of Greater St. Paul

Exclusive Engagement: The Missing Picture

Walker Cinema
Friday, April 25, 7:30 pm
Saturday, April 26, 4 and 7:30 pm
Sunday, April 27, 2 pm

$9 ($7 Walker members and seniors; $5 students)



Mixing animated clay figures, archival footage, and his own narration, Phnom Penh-born director Rithy Panh forms a deeply haunting and personal account of his experience with the Khmer Rouge, uncovering untold stories of the many who suffered and those who survived under Pol Pot's faltering cultural revolution.

This "powerful testament to incredible human resilience" (Time Out) won the Un Certain Regard Award at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for an Academy Award.

The Walker Cinema is proud to present this exclusive engagement--this will be your only chance to see the film projected in a movie theater in the Twin Cities.

» Tickets and more information

2014 Armenian Genocide Commemoration

April 24th, 7:20PM

St. Sahag Armenian Church
203 N. Howell St. in St Paul, MN
(In the Summit Ave. neighborhood midway between Macalester College and St Thomas University)

Through prayer, poetry, speeches and music, we will reflect on the renewal of the Armenian spirit and the indomitable strength of the Armenian people.

Sponsors: Armenian Cultural Organization of Minnesota

Genocide and its Aftermaths: Lessons from Rwanda

A Series of Events to Commemorate the 20th Anniversary of the genocide in Rwanda
April 16, 17, 19, 2014
University of Minnesota
Sponsorship made possible in part by the Arsham and Charlotte Ohanessian Fund at the Minneapolis Foundation.



The Institute for Global Studies, The Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies and the Human Rights Program are hosting three days of events to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the genocide that took place in Rwanda in 1994. The events will include a public conference, a student conference, and a K-16 teacher workshop. The objectives of the commemorative events are: promoting public understanding of what happened in Rwanda, discussing the immediate responses of the international community to the violence, and analyzing the long-term consequences that the cataclysmic failure to prevent the genocide had on international policy and action.

For a complete listing of events please click here.

Spring Educator Workshop: An Overview of Genocide in 1990s and Early 2000s

One of the series of events to commemorate the 20th Anniversary of the Genocide in Rwanda
An Overview of Genocide in 1990s and Early 2000s and the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda: A Case Study
Instructor: Samuel Totten, Professor Emeritus of Curriculum and Instruction, University of Arkansas
Saturday, April 19
9:00 a.m. - 3:00 p.m.
Conference Room 325 Coffman Union, East Bank of U of MN



In this educator workshop, visiting scholar Samuel Totten will begin by discussing the origins, causes and responses to genocide within the scope of human rights and international law. He will then give an overview and summary of genocides perpetrated in Africa and beyond in 1990s including the Nuba Mountains; Srebrenica; and Darfur before examining in depth, as a case study, the 1994 Genocide of Rwanda. Totten will finish by addressing the latest outbreaks of violence in the world, which crimes against humanity have been perpetuated, and noting where there is a fear of genocide breaking out.

Participants of this workshop will receive resources (including one of Totten's books) and materials to develop curriculum to integrate into their classrooms. This workshop will address the 2011 Minnesota Academic Standards for Social Studies as they relate to human rights, international law, and genocide.

Cost: $25 includes parking, a copy of one of Samuel Totten's books, resources, and lunch
CEUs: 6
Registration deadline: April 5, 2014
To register click here
Cancellation deadline: If you need to cancel, write to Deborah Jane at outreach@umn.edu by April 5, 2014. If you cancel after this date, you will not be eligible for a refund.
The Institute for Global Studies in partnership with The Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies and the Human Rights Program are hosting a series of events to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the genocide that took place in Rwanda in 1994. The events will include a public conference, a student conference, and a K-16 teacher workshop. The objectives of the commemorative events are: promoting public understanding of what happened in Rwanda, discussing the immediate responses of the international community to the violence, and analyzing the long-term consequences that the cataclysmic failure to prevent the genocide had on international policy and action.
Sponsorship made possible in part by the Arsham and Charlotte Ohanessian Fund at the Minneapolis Foundation.
For a complete listing of events, participating scholars and sponsors please click here.
Photo: Men with weapons (taken by Totten in Nuba Mountains, January 2013)

Laughter in the Dark: Newly Discovered Songs and Sketches from the Terezín/Theresienstadt Ghetto, 1942-44

A Lecture by Lisa Peschel, University of York's Department of Theatre, Film and Television, with musical performances by Ryan Lindberg, Emily Zimmer and Peter Vitale
Thursday, April 3
7:30 p.m.
Lloyd Ultan Hall Ferguson Hall
Free and open to the public

Jewish prisoners at the Terezín concentration camp and ghetto performed cabaret and comedy sketches for their fellow prisoners. The scripts were then lost for over 60 years before Lisa Peschel, a graduate of the University of Minnesota, discovered them during interviews with some of the camp survivors.

Twin Cities performers Ryan Lindberg and Emily Zimmer, will present a selection of the lost songs and sketches, many which have not been performed since World War II.

The performances will be interwoven with spoken explanations by Peschel. She will outline how the plays came to light and their role in helping prisoners deal with life in the ghetto.

Sponsored by: Center for Austrian Studies, European Studies Consortium, Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies and the Center for Jewish Studies.

Special Screening The Act of Killing

Photo Sensitive: Reflecting on Transfer of Memory

A conversation between Professor Leslie Morris and Photographer David Sherman
Sunday, March 2
California Building, 2205 California St. NE, Suite 204, Minneapolis
Tickets: $10.00 ($5.00 for Students)to purchase contact Rimon at 952-381-3449 or by clicking here.

Professor Morris and Mr. Sherman will discuss the power and responsibility of art to speak to how we understand the Holocaust and those immediately touched by it.

Professor Leslie Morris is Associate Professor of German at the University of Minnesota. She served as director of the University's Center for Jewish Studies from 2000 to 2009. She is also affiliated with the Center for German and European Studies and the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies. Memory and history are overarching themes in Morris's work. Her interest in understanding Jewish experience is expressed through her study of a spectrum of artistic media, including word, sound, and the use of the body itself. She is currently completing a book entitled The Translated Jew: Jewish Writing Outside the Margins.

David Sherman, created the photographic portraits for the Jewish Community Relations Councils exhibit Transfer of Memory,producing portraits of local Holocaust survivors in color with the intention of capturing them not as victims but as individuals who have survived to have full lives. Each portrait reflects the life of the sitter, providing future generations with a memory of those who have both survived and those who did not.

This event is the third in the 2013-14 series of Rimon Artist Salons.
For more information please visit the Rimon website.

Panel Discussion: "Remembering the Holocaust in Literature, Film, and Theology"

February 6
7:00 p.m.
Benson Great Hall, Bethel University

This panel discussion will touch on the role of memory in constructing identity and the ethical challenge that the Holocaust presents to the modern world and the Christian and Jewish communities. The evening will be primarily conversational, with audience participation through Q&A. The panel will feature:

Alejandro Baer, Associate Professor & Director, Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies, University of Minnesota

Victoria Barnett, Director of the Program on Ethics, Religion, and the Holocaust at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum

Steve Carr, Professor of Communication at Indiana University Purdue University Fort Wayne, specializing in Holocaust Film Studies

Robert Ehrenreich, Director of the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum

Petra Schweitzer, Professor at Shenandoah University specializing in women in the Holocaust

This program has been made possible by the Programs on Ethics, Religion, and the Holocaust, Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, with the support of the Hoffberger Foundation.

Global Holocaust Memory and the New Antisemitism.

A lecture by Alejandro Baer
Wednesday, February 5
7:30 p.m.
Beth El Synagogue

Research on contemporary antisemitism, as well as Holocaust education and commemoration reveals that the way people think about the Holocaust is changing. Rather than public discussions of the Holocaust discouraging hatred, in some cases the reverse is happening. This new phenomenon, sometimes called "memory envy," or "Holocaust skepticism," is channeling new resentments and hostilities. Professor Baer will shed light on the sources, functions and different contexts of emergence of a new anti-Semitism related to the globalization of Holocaust memory.

Professor Baer is the director and Stephen C. Feinstein Chair of the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the University of Minnesota. He has authored numerous articles addressing issues of genocide, memory, and antisemitism. Prof. Baer directed the Spanish section of the Shoah Visual Archives and has served as a member of the Spanish delegation to the International Task Force for Holocaust Education Remembrance and Research.

Sponsored by the Center for Jewish Studies, Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Department of German, Scandinavian and Dutch, Jewish Community Relations Council.

Local survivor and friend of CHGS Gustav "Gus" Gutman dies at 78

It is with great sadness that the Center for Holocaust and Genocide announces the passing of Gus Gutman. We recently had the pleasure of working with Gus on the "Portraying Memories" project with artist Felix de la Concha. Gus was an enthusiastic participant, turning what is typically a 2-4 hour session into a daylong adventure involving a trip to the Shalom Home, where he introduced Felix to his good friend Walter Schwartz, so he could participate as well.



Gus was always full of energy, a wonderful storyteller and great to be around. We were very surprised to hear he was ill and extremely saddened to hear of his passing on January 11.

Although Gus was a child during the Holocaust, he spoke often about remembering the events of Kristallnacht (the Nazi pogrom) that took place throughout Germany and Austria on November 9,10, 1938. "I was just a small child in Hildesheim when my father held me up to see the smoke coming from our beloved synagogue. The experience was so embedded in my memory I even wrote a play, "Guests of the City," about my return to Germany with flashbacks to that time which was produced and performed in my home town Hildesheim in 2005 (I played my father)."

We are very fortunate that Gus's story will live on the CHGS website and that others will be able to view his painting session with Felix de la Concha. The portrait will also be on display in an exhibition planned for Spring of 2015, and website dedicated to all of Felix de la Concha's Holocaust portraits.

Gus's story can be seen by clicking here.

Gustav Gutman, 01/20/1935 - 01/11/2014: Obituary

Course: Politics of Reconciliation, Memory, and Justice

Monday/Wednesday 1:00-2:15pm
Spring Semester

Prof. Alejandro Baer (Sociology) and Prof. Catherine Guisan (Political Science)

What is political reconciliation? Are we witnessing efforts to bring final resolution to long-standing conflicts? Should we accept that reconciliation is at best a fragile, temporary equilibrium between opposite political forces that must be reenacted with each passing generation? Is reconciliation an action that rests on religious faith, or does religion threaten reconciliation? Is there a dark side to reconciliation that undermines justice and economic fairness?

For more information on this course go to One Stop.

Third International Graduate Students' Conference on Genocide Studies to be held at Clark University

The Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Clark University will host the Third International Graduate Students' Conference on Genocide Studies: The State of Research 100 Years after the Armenian Genocide on 9 -11 April 2015, in cooperation with the Danish Institute for International Studies, Department of Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Copenhagen. The conference will provide a forum for doctoral students to present their research projects to peers and established scholars. The keynote speaker will be Professor Eric Weitz, Dean of Humanities and Arts and Professor of History at the City College of New York.

This interdisciplinary conference will reflect the full range of issues, concepts, and methods in current Genocide Studies research. The keynote address and a focus on papers that explore the Armenian Genocide are planned in commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the events of 1915. Papers that put the Armenian Genocide in a broader perspective and examine the concept of Ottoman Genocide carried out against minority ethnic-religious groups, including Assyrians and Greeks, are especially encouraged. Topics may include forceful mass-deportations, expulsions, and massacres during the late Ottoman period. We also invite pertinent applications from students working on the Holocaust as well as those who focus on genocides in Africa, Asia, Australia, and America as well as on the aftermath and collective memorialization of genocides.


Paper proposals from graduate students and recent post-docs (since 2012) across all disciplines are invited. Interested applicants should submit for consideration 1) a short curriculum vitae (one page max.) including name, address, email, and telephone number; 2) the title and an abstract of your paper (approx. 300 words, one page max. in English), addressing its basic arguments, its sources, and its relation to your dissertation project (for instance: summary, proposal, or chapter of the dissertation); and 3) a brief letter from your advisor indicating your enrollment in a doctoral program. We also invite applications for complete panels consisting of three papers. Such submissions should include a panel description of approx. 500 words.
The costs of travel, accommodation, registration, and meals will be covered for applicants whose papers are accepted. We will begin accepting applications on March 15, 2014 and the final deadline is August 15, 2014.
For more information click here.

Graduate Course: Topics in Law, Crime, and Deviance: Gender, Mass Violence & Crime in International Law

Sociology 8190: Topics in Law, Crime, and Deviance: Gender, Mass Violence &
Crime in International Law

Spring 2014

This course examines crime and criminal justice as gendered phenomena with a
specific emphasis on gender-based violence during conflict. It explores how notions of different types of masculinity and femininity are embedded in and influence criminal behaviors, the operation of the criminal justice system, and the evolution of international criminal law. Course readings draw on historical and contemporary research and various theoretical perspectives, some of which present very different ways to think about how crime and criminal justice are shaped by gender and sex.

Human Rights Minor Paula Sofía Cuellar Cuellar to Present at the Next HGMV Workshop

Trials and Genocides
Holocaust Genocide & Mass Violence Studies Workshop (HGMV)
Thursday, December 12, 2013
3:00p.m.
Room 710 Social Sciences Building



With the internationalization of human rights in the aftermath of the World War II, a new paradigm emerged within the international community. The Westphalian concept of sovereignty was abandoned and was replaced by the idea that human rights were a matter of global concern. The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was among the first international treaties enacted under that new world order. That treaty states that the persons charged with genocide "shall be tried."However, in times of transition to democracy, a question arises: are trials a viable option to prosecute genocidaires?

Paula Sofía Cuellar Cuellar's academic education includes a LL.B. Degree from the Central American University "José Simeón Cañas" and includes a Master´s Degree in Human Rights and Education for Peace from the University of El Salvador and a LL.M. Degree in International Human Rights Law from Notre Dame. She also, has a Postgraduate Diploma on Human Rights and Democratization´s Processes from the University of Chile and several diplomas on constitutional law and transitional justice courses. She is currently working towards a minor in Human Rights and an advanced degree in History at the University of Minnesota.