UPCOMING EVENTS:
INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE: “The Allied Powers’ Response to the Holocaust,” a four-day conference cosponsored by the World Jewish Congress and the Israel Council on Foreign Relations, will be held at the Menachem Begin Heritage Center in Jerusalem from March 16 to March 20, 2015. Wyman Institute director Dr. Rafael Medoff will deliver the keynote address. Wyman Institute Academic Council members Prof. Stephen Norwood, Prof. Laurel Leff, and Prof. Bat-Ami Zucker will be among the speakers at the conference. Admission is free but advance registration is required. More information: http://www.
RECENT EVENTS, LECTURES, AND PUBLICATIONS:
1. Eighty-five leading Holocaust and genocide scholars from around the world signed a recent letter, organized by the Wyman Institute, protesting Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas’s public embrace of the indicted Darfur war criminal Omar al-Bashir, president of Sudan. The signatories included distinguished scholars from the United States, Canada, Israel, Belgium, Germany, India, the Netherlands, Panama, South Africa, and Hong Kong. Details: http://historynewsnetwork.org/
2. The Wyman Institute recently published an important monograph, “Breaking the Rules: Violations of Academic Standards in the Debate Over FDR’s Response to the Holocaust,” authored by Dr. Rafael Medoff and Prof. Bat-Ami Zucker (Bar-Ilan University). For copies, write to: info@wymaninstitute.org
3. Wyman Institute Academic Council member Prof. Laurel Leff (Northeastern University) authored “Combating Prejudice and Protectionism in American Medicine: The Physicians Committee’s Fight for Refugees from Nazism, 1939–1945” in Holocaust and Genocide Studies 28:2.
4. Wyman Institute Arts & Letters Council member Prof. Thane Rosenbaum (New York University) will speak on “God, Faith & Identity from the Ashes,” with Menachem Rosensaft, at the Park Avenue Synagogue, 50 East 87 St., New York City, on March 24, and at The Temple Emanu-El Skirball, 1 East 65 St., New York City, on April 16. For more information, visit: thanerosenbaum.com
Thane’s new novel, How Sweet It Is, is due out on April 1–see:
5. Rafael Medoff spoke in February at the St. Louis Holocaust Museum, in Phoenix for the Bureau of Jewish Education, and at the Jewish Museum of Baltimore. His essays have appeared recently in The Weekly Standard, Tablet, and other publications.
6. Wyman Institute Advisory Committee member Rabbi Prof. David Golinkin recently completed a translation into English of a Yiddish-language booklet written in 1939 by his father, the late Rabbi Noah Golinkin, about YIVO for the Amopteyl, YIVO’s American division. (Noah Golinkin is one of those featured in the book The Student Struggle Against the Holocaust, by Rafael Medoff and David Golinkin.) The booklet, released as a memorial on the occasion of Noah Golinkin’s tenth yahrzeit, may be viewed at:
7. Wyman Institute Academic Council member Prof. Steven Jacobs (University of Alabama) spoke on “Re-Reading, Re-Visiting, & Re-Thinking L’Affaire Kasztner: Contemporary Implications,” at the conference on “The Holocaust in Hungary 70 Years On: New Perspectives,” Florida Gulf Coast University; on “Hasidei Umot Haolam (The Righteous Among the Nations): Gentiles? Christians? Who Were They? What Were They? Why Did They Do What They Did?,” and on “‘Unsere passport is di arbeit!’ The Complicated Case of Mordecai Chaim Rumkoffski and the Lodz Ghetto: The Moral Dilemma of Interacting with Those Who Do Evil in an Attempt to Do Good,” as part of Holocaust Education Week, in Toronto.
8. Wyman Institute Academic Council member Prof. Zsuzsanna Ozsvath (University of Texas at Dallas) coauthored (with Fred Turner) the new book Light within the Shade: Eight Hundred Years of Hungarian Poetry, published by Syracuse University Press, 2014. It contains some 135 poems starting in the 12th century; the poets include the famed Miklos Radnoti, who was killed in the Holocaust. Ten of his last poems were found in the pocket of his rain coat, after his body was detected in a mass grave.
Prof. Ozsvath also spoke recently at the Texas Community College Teachers’ Association on “With Great Wings Cover Us/ O Guardian Cloud of Night.” She will speak at the Jewish Federation of Greater Dallas, on March 8, on “Chosen or Given: Jewish Identity in Hungary 1700-2014″; and at The Dallas Institute for the Humanities, on April 24, concerning her new book.
9. Wyman Institute Academic Council member Prof. Gershon Greenberg (American University) authored “Al hametahistoriah vehashoah” in Zehuyot: Jewish Identities 6 (2015):13-20, and
“R. Areleh Roth: Pristine Faith Through Holocaust and Redemption,” in Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 14 no. 1 (2015):72-88