by Tara S. Donahue

For the 23rd year, Vanderbilt is helping to ensure that the Holocaust is not forgotten by sponsoring a two-and-a-half-week lecture series that reflects upon this grim period in history.

 

Photo courtesy of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum This image of Jews captured by German troops during the Warsaw ghetto uprising was taken from the album of SS General Jurgen Stroop who crushed the uprising. The photograph was used as evidence during the Nuremberg Trials.

This year, the focus is on how the arts -- images, paintings, film and music -- help individuals better understand this historic period.

The longest-running lecture series in the country devoted to the Holocaust at any college or university, the series began in 1977 and has attracted renowned speakers to the campus each year since to help new generations learn more about the genocide of 6 million Jews during World War II.

With the theme "Arts of Remembrance," the 2000 Vanderbilt Holocaust Lecture series will include speakers and examples of artists' approaches to remembering the Holocaust. As in each previous year, a Holocaust survivor will share her story.

"The arts provide us important ways to remember the Holocaust. In images, paintings and music, they give an immediacy and a particularly human and intimate expression to those events and to their victims," said James Booth, professor of political science and one of the organizers of the lecture series.

"They are also vehicles for bearing witness, for ensuring that the dead are not lost to the oblivion of forgetting. And likewise, they offer powerful warnings and counsel to us in the present," Booth added.

All events are free and open to the public.

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Monday, Oct. 16

"Exploring the Holocaust through the visual arts." Lecture by Stephen Feinstein, director of the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the University of Minnesota. 8 p.m. Wilson Hall, Room 103.

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Wednesday, Oct. 18

Mr. Death. Film about the career of Fred Leuchter Jr., a self-taught consultant on the construction of "humane" execution devices who gained notoriety as the defense's engineering "expert" in the trial of the Canadian Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel. A discussion with Gregg Horowitz, assistant professor of philosophy, will follow. 7 p.m. Sarratt Cinema.

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Thursday, Oct. 19

"Children of a Vanished World: the Legacy of Roman Vishniac." Lecture by Mara Vishniac Kohn, daughter of photographer Roman Vishniac. 8 p.m. Wilson Hall, Room 103.

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Monday, Oct. 23

The Last Klezmer. Film about Klezmer pioneer Leopold Kozlowski. A discussion with the director, Yale Strom, will follow. 7 p.m. Sarratt Cinema.

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Tuesday, Oct. 24

Hot Pstromi. Musical performance by Yale Strom's band. 7 p.m. Sarratt Cinema.

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Thursday, Oct. 26

Train of Life. Winner of the 1999 Sundance Film Festival audience award. A story about the inhabitants of an isolated Jewish village who take the initiative to "deport" themselves. A discussion with Jay Geller, lecturer in religious studies and adjunct lecturer in theology, will follow. 7 p.m. Sarratt Cinema.

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Monday, Oct. 30

"Screening Holocaust Memories." Lecture by Sara R. Horowitz, award -winning author of Voicing the Void: Muteness and Memory in Holocaust Fiction and a Jewish literature and Holocaust studies instructor at York University and its Centre for Jewish Studies. 8 p.m. Wilson Hall, Room 103.

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Wednesday, Nov. 1

"Artist and Survivor." Lecture by Alice Lok Cahana, survivor of the Holocaust, painter and participant in the Academy-award winning film, The Last Days by Stephen Spielberg. 8 p.m. Wilson Hall, Room 103.

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