The Regional Holocaust and Genocide Initiative: Resistance, Resilience, Responsibility will welcome noted Holocaust scholar Michael Berenbaum to Syracuse on Feb. 24 and 25 for two public lectures.
On Feb. 24, Berenbaum will speak at 7:30 p.m. at the Jewish Community Center on “Hollywood and the Holocaust: the Relationship of America to the Holocaust in American Cinema.” On Feb. 25, he will present “Anti-Semitism and Holocaust Denial in the Middle East” at a luncheon at noon in the Public Events Room, Room 220, of Eggers Hall. Both lectures and the luncheon are free and open to the public. Berenbaum’s visit is co-sponsored by Marilyn Ziering and the Ziering Family Foundation.
Berenbaum is professor of Jewish studies at American Jewish University, where he directs the Sigi Ziering Center for the Study of the Holocaust and Ethics. Prior to his appointment he was project director for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the first director of its Research Institute.
He is the author and editor of 18 books, scores of scholarly articles and hundreds of journalistic essays. Among his highly acclaimed books are “The World Must Know: the History of the Holocaust” (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), “Witness to the Holocaust: an Illustrated Documentary History of the Holocaust in the Words of its Victims” (William Morrow, 1997) and, most recently, “Not Your Father’s Anti-Semitism: Hatred of the Jews in the 21st Century” (Paragon House, 2008).
Berenbaum has also served as historical consultant to numerous award-winning TV documentaries and motion pictures on the Holocaust. His co-produced film, “One Survivor Remembers: the Gerda Weissman Klein Story” (HBO, 1995), was recognized with an Academy Award, an Emmy Award and the Cable Ace Award.
Berenbaum’s talk “Anti-Semitism and Holocaust Denial in the Middle East” is also co-sponsored by the Maxwell School’s Middle Eastern Studies Program through a grant from the U.S. Department of Education, and by the Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs’ Project on Democracy in the Middle East. Associate professor Miriam F. Elman, director of the Middle East democracy project and co-principal investigator for the federal grant on Middle Eastern studies, will be hosting the public lecture. “The Jewish experience in the Middle East region is one that is less well known than other places of the Diaspora,” Elman says. “I am excited to have Michael Berenbaum, a leading expert on the Holocaust and post-Holocaust world, speak to the Syracuse community on how anti-Semitism has evolved in the Arab and non-Arab Middle East, and its connection to current anti-Israel positions in the region.”
The Regional Holocaust and Genocide Initiative: Resistance, Resilience and Responsibility, a Chancellor’s Leadership Project, is an educational initiative to preserve the memory and lessons of the Holocaust and past and current genocides through performances, workshops and public dialogues about law, justice and ethics. For more information, contact project director Alan Goldberg, School of Education professor emeritus, at agoldbe1@twcny.rr.com or visit http://soe.syr.edu/centers_institutes.
For more on the Project on Democracy in the Middle East see http://middle-eastern-studies.syr.edu or contact Elman at melman@maxwell.syr.edu.
