» Events
Lecture Series 2024-2025
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Screening of "The Hidden Map"
September 17 | 4 p.m.
Bush Conference Center | Beckman Hall | Room 404
Chapman University
Screening of "The Hidden Map"
ANI HOVANNISIAN
Filmmaker and Broadcast Journalist
The Hidden Map brings to life the remarkable journey of an Armenian-American granddaughter of Armenian Genocide survivors and a Scottish explorer as they trek through the forbidden Armenian homeland in today’s eastern Turkey, uncovering buried truths, sacred relics, and silenced voices.
This screening of The Hidden Map is the first since the completion of the film’s two-year run on PBS. The Hidden Map has aired more than 2,000 times since its debut in 2022, has earned more than a dozen international awards and honors at festivals and special screenings, and was considered for three Primetime Emmys.
A broadcast journalist, as well as a filmmaker, Ani Hovannisian Kevorkian has traveled the world, from operating rooms in Siberia to green rooms at the Grammys, producing non-fiction stories for network television and other media. She is a member of the Directors Guild of America, Television Academy, and International Documentary Association.
Admission is free.
For more information and to register for free parking, please visit this event's page.
Inseparable: One Family's Extraordinary Story of Holocaust Survival
The John and Toby Martz Distinguished Lecture in Holocaust Studies
September 24 | 7 p.m.
Wallace All Faiths Chapel | Fish Interfaith Center
Chapman University
Inseparable: One Family's Extraordinary Story of Holocaust Survival
FARIS CASSELL
Award-winning Journalist
Author of Inseparable: The Hess Twins' Holocaust Journey through Bergen-Belsen to America
MARION EIN LEWIN
Survivor of Bergen-Belsen
Former Senior Staff Officer at the Institute of Medicine of the Natioanl Academies of Science
In her 2023 book, Inseparable: The Hess Twins’ Holocaust Journey through Bergen-Belsen to America, Faris Cassell tells the extraordinary story of the Hess family, twins Marion and Steven, and their parents, Karl and Ilse. The twins, only six years old when they were deported from Amsterdam, are now the only known surviving twins of the Holocaust.
Faris Cassell is a journalist and 2021 National Jewish Book Award-winning author of The Unanswered Letter. She has been a feature writer and columnist for newspapers and magazines and was a researcher for The Los Angeles Times. A graduate of Mt. Holyoke College and the University of Oregon, she has traveled thousands of miles to research and tell previously untold stories.
Born in the Netherlands, Marion Hess Ein Lewin survived the Holocaust together with her parents and twin brother. Remarkably, the family—thanks to luck and the resolute determination and resourcefulness of the twins’ parents—remained together throughout the Holocaust, one of only a handful of families to do so. They survived the transit camp Westerbork (where the Frank family was also sent), the horrific concentration camp Bergen-Belsen, and a perilous journey on the “lost train” in the last days of the war. The family was liberated by Soviet soldiers on April 23, 1945 near Trӧbitz, Germany and came to the United States on January 1, 1947.
The Hess twins were nine years old when they arrived in New York. They had never attended school and were initially placed in kindergarten, moving up a grade every few weeks. Marion went on to attend Barnard College and Columbia University. Her professional life has focused on health policy and health care economics. For 15 years, she was Senior Staff Officer at the Institute of Medicine at the National Academies of Science and headed its Office of Health Policy Programs and Fellowships.
Admission is free.
For more information and to register for free parking, please visit this event's page.
An Interfaith Service of Remembrance for Kristallnacht
November 7 | 7 p.m.
Wallace All Faiths Chapel | Fish Interfaith Center
Chapman University
This year we continue our tradition of coming together as an interfaith community to remember the pogrom of November 9-10, 1938, often referred to as Kristallnacht. We remember those targeted by the antisemitic violence that swept across Germany and Austria during the pogrom, and we honor the courageous few who dared to stand with the persecuted and defy
Nazi authority.
Kristallnacht - Through the Lens of Today
MICHAEL BERENBAUM
Distinguished Professor of Jewish Studies
Director of the Sigi Ziering Institute: Exploring the Ethical and Religious Implications of the Holocaust, American Jewish University
Our speaker, Dr. Michael Berenbaum, is a renowned writer, lecturer, and educator, as well as a consultant in the development of museums and historical films. He has written scores of scholarly articles and hundreds of journalistic pieces and is the author or editor of twenty-four books. He was the executive editor of the 2nd edition of the Encyclopedia Judaica of 22 volumes which received the prestigious Dartmouth Medal of the American Library Association for the Outstanding Reference Work of 2006.
Dr. Berenbaum was the Project Director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, overseeing its creation and for three years was President and Chief Executive Officer of the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation.
He has also served as the conceptual developer and/or chief curator of numerous museums, including: The Illinois Holocaust Museum and Educational Center; Belzec Memorial at the site of the death camp, and Memoria y Tolerancia in Mexico City. He was co-curator of the award-winning special exhibition, Auschwitz: Not Long Ago, Not Far Away and is currently working on the development of museums in Warsaw and Bucharest.
Funded in part by The Sally and Jerry Schwartz Endowment for Holocaust Education and
The John and Toby Martz Distinguished Lecture in Holocaust Studies
Co-sponsored by the Fish Interfaith Center
Admission is free.
For more information and to register for free parking, please visit this event's page.
26th Annual Holocaust Art & Writing Contest
What do you bring when you don't know where you're going?
Participating schools may submit a total of three entries (one entry per student) in any combination of the following categories: art, film, poetry, or prose.
Students will be eligible to win a first-prize award of $400 in each category. Educators and schools will also be eligible to win a first prize of $200 each.
First-place student winners in the United States, their parents/guardians, and teachers will be invited to participate in an expense-paid study trip June 23-27, 2025, to visit the Museum of Tolerance and other sites in Los Angeles, as well as to meet with members of The 1939 Society, a community of Holocaust survivors, descendants, and friends.
Funding permitting, this year’s U.S. winning participants will be joined by first-place students living outside of the United States. In addition, first-place student entries will be posted on Chapman University’s contest website.
Students awarded second prize in each category will receive $200, and their sponsoring educator and school will receive $100 each.
For more information about how to get your middle or high school students involved,
please visit the Holocaust Art & Writing Contest page.
An Evening of Holocaust Remembrance
An Evening of Holocaust Remembrance
April 22 | 7 p.m.
Wallace All Faiths Chapel • Fish Interfaith Cente
Reservations required. Free admission.
Additional event information, including ticketing and parking coming soon!
Lecture Series 2023-2024
Expand the sections to view the more information for each event.
"Messengeres of Memory" Exhibit
APRIL 17 - JULY 31, 2024
In the Burra Family Community Room of the
Hilbert Museum of California Art at
Chapman University
MESSENGERS OF MEMORY:
25 Years of the Holocaust Art & Writing Contest
We invite you to visit the special curated exhibit, Messengers of Memory, highlighting 25 years of prize-winning entries in the Holocaust Art & Writing Contest, co-sponsored by the Rodgers Center for Holocaust Education at Chapman University and The 1939 Society.
This extraordinary exhibit, including art, prose, poetry, and film, honors Holocaust survivors and celebrates the creativity of students who are their voices to the future - messengers of memory.
Parking available in the
Old Towne West Parking Structure
130 N. Lemon Street
An Evening of Holocaust Remembrance
An Evening of Holocaust Remembrance
May 2 | 7 p.m.
Wallace All Faiths Chapel • Fish Interfaith Center
A Collaborative Program of Holocaust-Era Music
and
Chayim Frenkel
Kehillat Israel Reconstructionist Congregation, Pacific Palisades
Reservations required. Free admission.
Visit events.chapman.edu for additional event information, including ticketing and parking.
25th Annual Holocaust Art & Writing Contest
March 15 at 11:00 am (Pacific)
Join us as we recognize student and educator achievement at the 25th Annual Holocaust Art & Writing Contest. This year, students focused on the theme Answering the Call of Memory: Choosing to Act.
Our program will include students reading their first-place entries, including screenings of the first-place films. It will feature a special message from Nadia Murad, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, Human Rights Activist, and Chapman University Presidential Fellow.
To be part of our virtual audience, click the link below at 11:00 am (Pacific) on March 15:
https://chapman.zoom.us/j/98246070948
This link will not be active until we begin the live stream on the day of the event.
Download the event program to follow along.
An Interfaith Service of Remembrance for Kristallnacht
November 7 | 7 p.m.
Wallace All Faiths Chapel • Fish Interfaith Center
Architecture and Antisemitism Before and
After the November 9, 1938 Pogrom:
The Political Uses of Building in Nazi Germany
This year we continue our tradition of coming together as an interfaith community to remember the pogrom of November 9-10, 1938, often referred to as Kristallnacht. We remember those targeted by the antisemitic violence that swept across Germany and Austria during the pogrom, and we honor the courageous few who dared to stand with the persecuted and defy
Nazi authority.
At this year’s event, Duke University scholar of art, art history, and architecture, Dr. Paul Jaskot will bring his interdisciplinary expertise to bear in exploring how spatial histories clarify the radicalization of genocidal policies.
Dr. Jaskot is chair of the Department of Art, Art History, and Visual Studies at Duke University where he is also co-director of the Digital Art History & Visual Culture Research Lab. He is the author or co-editor of several groundbreaking books, including (co-edited with Alexandra Garbarini) New Approaches to an Integrated History of the Holocaust: Social History, Representation, Theory (2018) and The Architecture of Oppression: The SS, Forced Labor and the
Nazi Monumental Building Economy (2000), and dozens of articles. He holds a Ph.D. in Art History from Northwestern University, Dr. Jaskot is on the editorial board of the Journal of Jewish Identities and the German Studies Review and is associate editor for architectural history of Grove Art Online. From 2008 – 2010, he was president of the College Art Association. Dr. Jaskot
is the recipient of numerous fellowships and awards, including from the Getty Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Funded in part by The Sally and Jerry Schwartz Endowment for Holocaust Education and
The John and Toby Martz Distinguished Lecture in Holocaust Studies
Co-sponsored by the Fish Interfaith Center
Register and use the claim code RC45098
to receive free parking for this event.
A Year That Mattered: Varian Fry and the Refugee Crisis, 1940-41
October 17 | 7 p.m.
Beckman Hall, Room 404
A Year That Mattered: Varian Fry and the
Refugee Crisis, 1940 - 41
German victory over France in June 1940 brought new dangers for those who had sought a safe haven there from Nazi persecution. Especially alarming was the “surrender on demand” clause of the armistice which required authorities in Vichy France, the southern part of the country not occupied by Germany, to arrest any individuals the Nazi regime demanded. Thousands of Europe’s most renowned writers and artists, mostly Jews, now faced immediate threat. What could be done?They will bring their expertise to these and other still debated questions, focusing specifically on the actions of Varian Fry (1907-1967), a New York intellectual who after the fall of France to the Nazis spent a year in the southern port city of Marseilles. Defying the Nazis, the French Vichy regime and his own government, Fry led one of the most remarkable and successful rescue efforts of the Nazi era, saving some 2,000 artists, intellectuals, and anti-Nazi refugees, Jewish and non-Jewish.
Daniel Greene is Subject Matter Expert at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum and Adjunct Professor of History at Northwestern University. In 2018, he curated Americans and the Holocaust, an exhibition that opened at the USHMM to commemorate its 25th anniversary.
The exhibition inspired the Emmy-nominated documetnary series The US and the Holocaust that aired on PBS in September 2022. Greene and Edward Phillips also co-edited Americans and the Holocaust: A Reader, published by Rutgers University Press in 2022. From 2019 to 2023, Greene was President and Librarian at the Newberry Library in Chicago.
Pierre Sauvage is an Emmy Award-winning documentary filmmaker and President of the Chambon Foundation which he founded in 1982. Born in Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, France, he
is a child survivor of the Holocaust and a child of Holocaust survivors. Sauvage is best known for his feature documentary Weapons of the Spirit which tells the story of the conspiracy of goodness in a community that saved some 5,000 Jews. Weapons of the Spirit received numerous awards, includingthe prestigious Dupont-Columbia Award in Broadcast Journalism. It continues to be one of the most widely used documentary teaching tools on the Holocaust. Sauvage is currently at work on a major documentary on Varian Fry and his colleagues.
The John and Toby Martz Distinguished Lecture in Holocaust Studies
This event is made possible by the support of The Irv and Helga Cooper Foundation
This event is part of the series “The Holocaust and Lessons for Democracy”
Register and use the claim code RC62933
to receive free parking for this event.
Rebecca Donner - All the Frequent Trouble of Our Days
Rebecca Donner
Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography
Winner of the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography
A New York Times Book Review Notable Book of the Year
All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days:
The True Story of the American Woman at
the Heart of the German Resistance to Hitler
September 12 | 7 p.m.
A Zoom Presentation
In her deeply researched 2021 nonfiction work, All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days: The True Story of the German Woman at the Heart of the German Resistance to Hitler, Rebecca Donner tells the extraordinary story of her great-great-aunt Mildred Harnack, a young American Ph.D. student who became a leader in the largest underground anti-Nazi resistance group in Berlin. As the Wall Street Journal reported, Donner has written “a nonfiction narrative with the pace of a political thriller.”
In her acceptance speech for the National Book Critics Circle Award, Donner observed, “The men and women Mildred Harnack recruited into her underground resistance group were factory workers and office workers, artists and journalists, students and professors. While so many in Germany supported Hitler’s regime, or chose inaction, they chose to risk their lives—and resist. The story of their audacious courage serves as an inspiration to us all during this fraught time in the world.”
Rebecca Donner is the author of two critically acclaimed works of fiction and in 2022 was the recipient of a prestigious Guggenheim fellowship. Born in Canada, Donner is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley and Columbia University. She is currently a Radcliffe Fellow at Harvard University.
Rebecca Donner is represented by The Tuesday Agency • www.tuesdayagency.com
