National Catholic Center for Holocaust Education

On Wednesday April 18, at 7pm, an observation of Yom HaShoah will be held at Beth Israel Synagogue, Latrobe, PA .    Our speaker this year is Mr. Les Banos, rescuer and resistance fighter.

On Wednesday, March 28th at 7:30 in Admin 405, The JoAnne Boyle World Affairs Forum, Seton Hill’s STAND Chapter, and the National Catholic Center for Holocaust Education will sponsor a film screening of “A Blooming Business.”  This film, by Ton van Zantvoort, reveals the circumstances of those in Kenya trapped by the harmful realities of the flower industry.

The dates for the 2012 Summer Institute in Israel have been changed.  Now the Summer Institute will take place June 29 – July 19th.  Please contact Seton Hill University’s Catholic Center for Holocaust Education with any questions.

The Ethel LeFrak Holocaust Education Conference 2012

SPEAKERS

The National Catholic Center for Holocaust Education’s next Ethel LeFrak Holocaust Education Conference will take place October 21-23, 2012 at Seton Hill University, Greensburg, Pennsylvania. Titled “Holocaust Education: Challenges for the Future,” the conference will mark the beginning of the Catholic Center’s 25^th anniversary year.

Keynote Speaker

Rabbi Dr. Irving Greenberg will serve as the conference’s keynote speaker. Dr. Greenberg is a Modern Orthodox rabbi, Jewish-American scholar, author and leader in Holocaust education. In 1975, he founded the Zachor Holocaust Resource Center with Eli Wiesel. Also, he was executive director of President Jimmy Carter’s Commission on the Holocaust, which led to the establishment of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Later he served on the museum’s founding board and Council. In 2000, President William Clinton appointed him to chair the Council.

Dr. Greenberg was ordained at Yeshiva Beis Yosef in 1953, and earned a Ph.D. from Harvard University.  He served as the rabbi of the Riverdale Jewish Center, as an associate professor of history at Yeshiva University, as a founder, chairman, and professor in the department of Jewish Studies at the City College of the City University of New York.Additionally, Dr. Greenberg has served as the President of the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership.

Some of Dr. Greenberg’s works include: Cloud of Smoke, Pillar of Fire (1976); The Ethics of Jewish Power (1990); Judaism and Christianity: their Respective Roles in the Divine Strategy of Redemption (1996); and his most recent book, For the Sake of Heaven and Earth: The New Encounter Between Judaism and Christianity (2004).

Feature Speakers

The LeFrak Conference will feature nine top scholars and educators, who will provide a variety of featured presentations and workshops.

Yehuda Bauer, a historian and scholar of the Holocaust, is a Professor of Holocaust Studies at the Avraham Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. 
Additionally, Dr. Bauer has published numerous articles and books, including: Fight and Rescue: ‘Brichah’ (1970); From Diplomacy to Resistance (1973); My Brother’s Keeper (1974); The Holocaust in Historical Perspective (1978); The Jewish Emergence from Powerlessness (1979); American Jewry and the Holocaust (1981); A History of the Holocaust (1982); Out of the Ashes (1989); Rethinking the Holocaust (2001).

Dr. Eva Fogelman, social psychologist, psychotherapist, author, and filmmaker. Born in a displaced persons camp in Kassel, Germany, she organized the First Conference on Children of Holocaust Survivors in 1979 in New York City. In 1986 Fogelman founded the Jewish Foundation for Christian rescuers with Rabbi Harold Schulweis. This eventually became a project of the Anti-Defamation League and is now known as the Jewish Foundation for the Righteous. She is also an advisor to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Dr. Fogelman is in private practice in New York City and co-directs Psychotherapy with Generations of the Holocaust and Related Traumas at the Training Institute for Mental Health and Child Development Research. She is co-editor of Children during the Nazi Reign: Psychological Perspective on the Interview Process. Fogelman wrote and co-produced of the documentary Breaking the Silence: The Generation After the Holocaust which was aired on PBS.

Dr. Myrna Goldenberg, independent scholar and Professor Emerita at Maryland’s Montgomery College, currently teaches at The Johns Hopkins University of Maryland.  Goldenberg has published numerous essays and works on the Holocaust, Feminist Theory, and Multicultural Education, and co-authored Experience and Expression: Women, the Nazis, and the Holocaust (2003).

John T. Pawlikowski, a Servite priest and Professor of Social Ethics at the Catholic Theological Union of the University of Chicago, is a founding member of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council.  Father Pawlikowski has authored 10 books, including Catechetics and Christ, Sinai and the Calvary, The Challenge of the Holocaust for Christian Theology, Christ in the Light of Christian-Jewish Dialogue, and Jesus and the Theology of Israel.   He has been awarded the Raoul Wallenberg Humanitarian Award for Distinguished Contributions to Religion; the Nostra Aetate Award from the Archdiocese of Chicago, and the “Person of the Year Award” from the Polish Council of Christians and Jews (Warsaw).

Joanne Rudof has been the Archivist of the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies at Yale since 1990.  She received her B.S. at Temple University and her M.A. at Wesleyan University, and has held several volunteer positions regarding the Holocaust and Holocaust education.  Currently, Ms. Rudof is working on a project that centers on the preservation of Holocaust video testimonies.

Dr. Carol Rittner, RSM, is a Distinguished Professor of Holocaust & Genocide Studies and the Dr. Marsha R. Grossman Professor of Holocaust Studies at The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey.  She is a member of the Board of Trustees of College Misericordia, the Associate Editor of The Genocide Forum, Editor of the quarterly, Perspectives on Genocide, and member of the Executive Council of the Aegis Trust in the UK.  She has published numerous books, including: The Courage to Care: Non-Jews Who Rescued Jews During the Holocaust (1986); Different Voices: Women and the Holocaust (1993); The Holocaust and the Christian World (2000); Pius XII and the Holocaust (2002); and Will Genocide Ever End? (2002). Dr. Rittner’s film, “The Courage to Care,” was nominated for an Academy Award in 1986.

Dr. John K. Roth, author, editor, and professor of philosophy of religion at Claremont McKenna College, founded Claremont McKenna College’s Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide and Human Rights in 2003.  He has written and edited various works on Holocaust themes, including: Consuming Fire: Encounters with Elie Wiesel and the Holocaust (1979); The Holocaust and Its Legacy (with Richard Rubenstein, 1987); Holocaust: Religious and Philosophical Implications (ed. with Michael Berenbaum, 1989); and Memory Offended: The Auschwitz Convent Controversy (ed. with Carol Rittner, 1991).

Dr. Stephen Smith, a Holocaust specialist, is currently the Executive Director of the University of Southern California’s Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education. He also founded the United Kingdom’s Holocaust Centre located in Nottinghamshire, England in 1995. Dr. Smith has been a member of the International Task Force for Cooperation on Holocaust Education, Remembrance, and Research since 1998. He cofounded the Aegis Trust for the prevention of crimes against humanity and genocide and was the inaugural Chairman of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust. Some of Dr. Smith’s publications include: Making Memory: Creating Britain’s First Holocaust Centre; Forgotten Places: The Holocaust and the Remnants of Destruction; The Holocaust and the Christian World; Never Again, Yet Again, A Personal Struggle with the Holocaust and Genocide (Gefen 2009); No Going Back, Letters to Pope Benedict XVI (Quill Press 2009); The Void; In Search of Memory Lost (forthcoming).

Dr. James Waller, a social psychologist, received his B.S. degree from Asbury College in 1983, his M.S. degree from the University of Colorado in 1985, and his Ph.D. in social psychology from the University of Kentucky in 1988. From 1989 until 2008 Dr. Waller was a professor of psychology at Whitworth University in Spokane, Washington. He was a visiting professor at universities in Germany during the summers of 1990 and 1992 He was also an instructor at the Raphael Lemkin Seminar for Genocide Prevention at the Auschwitz Institute for Peace and Reconciliation and is now the Cohen Endowed Chair of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Keene State College in New Hampshire.  Dr. Waller’s works include: Face to Face: The Changing State of Racism Across America. (Perseus Books, 1998); Prejudice Across America (University Press of Mississippi, 2000); Becoming Evil: How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Killing. (Oxford University Press 2002) 1st Edition; Becoming Evil: How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Killing, (Oxford University Press 2007) 2nd Edition.

Carl Wilkens, director of the non-profit website www.worldoutsidemyshoes.org, is a great advocate for genocide awareness. In 1978 he traveled to Africa participating in a volunteer program. After receiving an MBA from the University of Baltimore, he moved his wife and children to Rwanda. Wilkens aided in the preservation of numerous lives while living in Rwanda. In 2005 he received the Medal of Valor from the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the Dignitas Humana Award from Saint John’s School of Theology Seminary.  Wilkens was featured in the documentary “Ghosts of Rwanda” airing on PBS and “The Few Who Stayed: Defying Genocide” which was presented on National Public Radio. In 2008 the Genocide Intervention Network named its first fellowship program “The Carl Wilkens Fellowship” out of respect for his dedication and work.

Follow this link to access the brochure for the 2012 Summer Institute in Israel.  SUMMERseminar201_DRAFT20Jan2012-1[1]

Attention: The dates for the Summer Institute in Israel have changed!  Now the Summer Institute will take place June 29th-July 19th.