- Home >
- Top Stories
The Holocaust theme of lecture, conference
October 26, 2007
The Holocaust, and the importance of teaching the lessons learned from it, are the theme of the annual Raphael Lemkin Lecture and the inaugural Powell and Heller Family Conference in Support of Holocaust Education slated for this Thursday and Friday.
The sixth annual Raphael Lemkin Lecture features Doris Bergen, the Chancellor Rose and Ray Wolfe Chair in Holocaust Studies at the University of Toronto. She will speak on the topic “Why Study the Holocaust?” on Thursday, Nov. 1 at 7 p.m. in Lagerquist Concert Hall.
Bergen specializes in 20th-Century German history, with an emphasis on the Nazi era and the Holocaust, and European women’s history. The winner of a number of prestigious research grants and awards for excellence in teaching, she is the author of “War & Genocide: A Concise History of the Holocaust” and “Twisted Cross: The German Christian Movement in the Third Reich.”
Her numerous articles focus on Christian anti-Semitism, military chaplains and issues related to gender and ethnicity in World War II. She is a member of the Academic Advisory Board of the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.
The lecture event also includes the announcement of a new endowment for Holocaust Studies at PLU.
The lecture is named for Raphael Lemkin, an author, international lawyer and Polish Jew who coined the term “genocide” and worked for passage of the United Nations genocide convention.
On the following day, Nov. 2, PLU will host the first annual Powell and Heller Family Conference in Support of Holocaust Education. The conference runs from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. in the Scandinavian Cultural Center.
Sponsored by the Powell and Heller families, the conference is committed to teaching the lessons of the Holocaust to people of all races and religious beliefs in the Pacific Northwest, in order to prevent its recurrence and foster mutual understanding and respect. It honors the millions who lost their lives in the Holocaust and survivors John and Georgette Heller, parents of Harry Heller and Carol Powell Heller.
The conference is intended for educators interested in teaching the Holocaust at the high school, community college or university level. It is also free and open to the public.
The conference features:
Conference presenters include:
For more information, contact Ericksen at ericksrp@plu.edu.
University Communications staff writer Megan Haley compiled this report. Comments, questions, ideas? Please contact her at ext. 8691 or at haleymk@plu.edu.
Bergen specializes in 20th-Century German history, with an emphasis on the Nazi era and the Holocaust, and European women’s history. The winner of a number of prestigious research grants and awards for excellence in teaching, she is the author of “War & Genocide: A Concise History of the Holocaust” and “Twisted Cross: The German Christian Movement in the Third Reich.”
Her numerous articles focus on Christian anti-Semitism, military chaplains and issues related to gender and ethnicity in World War II. She is a member of the Academic Advisory Board of the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.
The lecture event also includes the announcement of a new endowment for Holocaust Studies at PLU.
The lecture is named for Raphael Lemkin, an author, international lawyer and Polish Jew who coined the term “genocide” and worked for passage of the United Nations genocide convention.
On the following day, Nov. 2, PLU will host the first annual Powell and Heller Family Conference in Support of Holocaust Education. The conference runs from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. in the Scandinavian Cultural Center.
Sponsored by the Powell and Heller families, the conference is committed to teaching the lessons of the Holocaust to people of all races and religious beliefs in the Pacific Northwest, in order to prevent its recurrence and foster mutual understanding and respect. It honors the millions who lost their lives in the Holocaust and survivors John and Georgette Heller, parents of Harry Heller and Carol Powell Heller.
The conference is intended for educators interested in teaching the Holocaust at the high school, community college or university level. It is also free and open to the public.
The conference features:
- Auschwitz survivor Magda Schaloum, who will describe the fate of her family and her experiences in the Nazi camp and slave labor system
- A presentation by the Washington State Holocaust Education Resource Center about studying and teaching the Holocaust
- A discussion about the question of Christian complicity in the Holocaust, led by a panel of experts and participants in the film, “Theologians under Hitler”
Conference presenters include:
- Doris Bergen
- Robert Ericksen (pictured), PLU professor of history and the author of “Theologians under Hitler: Gerhard Kittel, Paul Althaus and Emanuel Hirsch,” which was made into a documentary of the same name
- Hartmutt Lehmann, visiting professor of history at UC Berkeley, who has established a reputation as an authority on German pietism in the 17th through 20th centuries and has also written extensively on German churches during the Nazi period.
- Hubert Locke, dean emeritus of the Daniel J. Evans Graduate School of Public Affairs, University of Washington. Along with Franklin Littell, Locke hosted the first Scholars Conference on Churches and the Holocaust, the oldest Holocaust conference still meeting annually in the United States.
For more information, contact Ericksen at ericksrp@plu.edu.
University Communications staff writer Megan Haley compiled this report. Comments, questions, ideas? Please contact her at ext. 8691 or at haleymk@plu.edu.