Steven Fischler, co-director and producer of “From Swastika to Jim Crow,” will screen his film on Thursday, February 14. The program will be presented under the auspices of the Gross Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies and is free and open to the public.

First released in 2000, the documentary explores the similarities between Nazism in Germany (the Swastika) and racism in the American south (Jim Crow). In 1933, the Nazi government expelled Jewish scholars from German universities. Many of them found teaching positions in Southern universities, where they sympathized with the plight of their African-American colleagues and students. The horrors of prejudice became a common thread that could bind these exiled Jewish professors with their black students and colleagues. The film pairs shocking archival footage of the KKK dressed in costume and carrying torches with footage of Nazi salutes and marching German soldiers to compare the barbarity of both ideologies.

---

Thursday, February 28, 12-1 p.m..
Ramapo College, H-wing Auditorium (H-129)

Scholar to Discuss Book on Jewish Survivors Returning to Poland after Holocaust

Dr. Monika Rice, Director of Holocaust and Genocide Studies Programs at Gratz College in Philadelphia, will speak about her recently published book, “What! Still Alive?!" Jewish Survivors in Poland and Israel Remember Homecoming, published by Syracuse University Press in 2017.

Dr. Rice examines the complex memories of Jewish survivors returning to their homes in Poland after the Holocaust. Having found themselves no longer welcome by their Polish neighbors, many chose to settle in the new state of Israel and left unparalleled testimonies of their first impressions with the Central Jewish Historical Commission from 1944 to 1950. Through close readings of these firsthand narratives, Rice traces the ways in which the passage of time and a changing geopolitical context influenced the survivors’ memories. An intricate history emerges in which survivors' memories from the initial account after their return to Poland and subsequent accounts become transformed. 

 

---

Thursday, February 28, 12-1 p.m..

Ramapo College, H-wing Auditorium (H-129)

The Myth of Judeo-Bolshevism to be Explored

Dr. Paul Hanebrink, associate professor of History and Jewish Studies at Rutgers University, will speak about his recently published book, A Specter Haunting Europe: The Myth of Judeo-Bolshevism (Harvard University Press, 2018). The program will be presented under the auspices of the Gross Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies and is free and open to the public.

For much of the twentieth century, Europe was haunted by the myth that Communism was a Jewish plot to destroy the nations of Europe. Although a contrived paranoid fantasy that took hold during the Russian Revolution, it spread across Europe becoming a potent political weapon of fascists, Nazis, conservative Christians, and other Europeans terrified by Communism. Under the Third Reich, the myth of Judeo-Bolshevism underpinned the Holocaust. Hanebrink argues that the Cold War saw a continuation of the myth that persists on both sides of the Atlantic till today.

---

Thursday, April 4, 10 a.m.-1 p.m.

Ramapo College, H-wing Auditorium (H-129)

1945 (Film Screening)

Directed by Ferenc Török and based on the acclaimed short story Homecoming by Gábor T. Szántó, the film “1945” tells the story of the return of an observant Jew and his son to a village in Hungary just as the inhabitants are preparing for the wedding of the town clerk's son. The townspeople – suspicious, remorseful, fearful and cunning – expect the worst and behave accordingly. Shot in gorgeous, high-contrast black-and-white, “1945” is a commentary on treachery and guilt during and after the Holocaust.

The screening is open to the public and free of charge.

The film was supposed to be shown twice last spring semester in connection with a memorial for deceased Gross Center Advisory Board member, John Gunzler, but both times weather events forced their cancellation.

---

Thursday, April 25, 12-1 p.m.

Ramapo College, H-wing Auditorium (H-129)

Son to Tell Story of His Parents’ Escape during Holocaust from Poland to the Soviet Union and Iran

Dr. Victor Borden, a retired obstetrician and gynecologist from Bergen County, will recount how his parents escaped the Holocaust in a presentation with the title, “Flight from German Oppression:Lodz, Arkhangelsk, Teheran, Tel-Aviv, & Paterson.”  The program will be presented under the auspices of the Gross Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies and is free and open to the public.

With only approximately 10% of Polish Jews having survived the Holocaust (around 330,000 people), the vast majority did so by escaping to the Soviet Union. The U.S.S.R.  provided a refuge that may have been inadvertent and involuntary, and conditions were extremely harsh for those who endured them. For example, by deporting Victor Borden’s parents and other members of his family to a slave labor camp near Arkhangelsk (Archangel in English) in the Russian frozen north, the Soviet authorities saved their lives. How they fared in captivity and eventually ended up in Iran and pre-independence Israel forms the rest of Dr. Borden’s remarkable story of survival.

---

Wednesday, May 2, 7 p.m.

Temple Beth Haverim Shir Shalom, 280 Ramapo Valley Road (Route 202), Mahwah, NJ 07430

Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day) Commemoration

The Gross Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies of Ramapo College will join Temple Beth Haverim Shir Shalom for a joint Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day) commemoration that will include a commemorative service conducted by Rabbi Illana Schwartzman with a program of chorale music performed by the adult choir of Temple Beth Haverim Shir Shalom, under Cantor David Perper.

---

Wednesday, May22, 9 a.m.-3 p.m.
Ramapo College, Trustees Pavilion (PAV1-3) Ethnic Cleansing: When Does it Become Genocide?

In cooperation and with the support of the New Jersey State Commission on Holocaust Education

Although the term "ethnic cleansing" gained currency after its use by the media to describe Serb initiatives to remove non-Serbs, especially Muslim Bosnians, from its territories during the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, the phenomenon of forcibly removing unwanted populations has been with us for much longer and persists into the present.  The goal of this workshop is to assist teachers in learning about its occurrence and how it relates to the development of genocide, so that they are able to bring into their classrooms a meaningful discussion of the topic.