Trinity College Professor To Speak At Manhattan College’s Holocaust Resource Center

RIVERDALE, N.Y. – Dr. Samuel Kassow, the Charles Northam Professor at Trinity College, will deliver the second annual Frederick M. Schweitzer Lecture on the Holocaust at Manhattan College on Monday, Nov. 16 at 7:30 p.m. in Smith Auditorium. The event, presented by the Holocaust Resource Center, is free and open to the public.

Kassow will deliver the lecture Between History and Catastrophe: Emanuel Ringelblum in the Warsaw Ghetto. He is the author of four books, including the award-winning Who Will Write Our History: Emanuel Ringelblum and the Oynet Shabes Archive (2007) and The Distinctive Life of East European Jewry (2004). A public intellectual whose efforts have contributed to the preservation of Jewish culture both in Europe and the United States, Kassow’s many scholarly articles have appeared in Polish, Russian and German, as well as in English.

The lecture coincides with the opening of Remembrance: A Daughter’s Reflections, an exhibit of paintings by artist Marilyn Honigman that will be displayed in the Alumni Room of O’Malley Library from Nov. 16-Dec. 18. Inspired by photos that an American solider gave to her father after he was liberated from Dachau, Honigman’s works are a visual representation of the Holocaust.

The Frederick M. Schweitzer Lecture on the Holocaust is a lecture series named in honor of Frederick M. Schweitzer, professor emeritus of history, who was the instrumental voice behind the launch of Manhattan College’s Holocaust Resource Center in 1996 and served as its director until 2007. Schweitzer has been a member of the College community for nearly half a century.

For more information about this event, please contact Dr. Jeff Horn, associate professor of history and director of the Holocaust Resource Center at Manhattan College, at (718) 862-7129 or jeff.horn@manhattan.edu.

The history of the Holocaust Resource Center dates back to 1996, when discussions among Manhattan’s concerned faculty and administrators and the Riverdale community led to its founding with the mission to promote Catholic-Jewish dialogue and educate future generations about the Holocaust. The center inaugurated its Visiting Scholars Program the next year, and in 2006, an additional annual lecture was added to the series that focuses on genocides other than the Holocaust.

To further its mission, the center sponsored workshops for teachers in the metropolitan area from 1997-2002 and worked closely with the College’s school of education to incorporate segments on the Holocaust into curriculum and special courses.

In the past decade, the center has sponsored bus trips to the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., and New York City’s Battery Park. It also has sponsored events, such as commemorations of Yom Hashoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day) and Kristallnacht, and model Passover seders on campus and in the community. The center has published educational books such as Reflections of the Soul: Martin Spett’s Holocaust Experiences, as well as DVDs on Holocaust survivors created by Manhattan College students.

More information about the Holocaust Resource Center can be found on its Web site at home.manhattan.edu/holocaustcenter/.

Members of the media who would like to cover the event should call Scott Silversten at (718) 862-7232 or e-mail scott.silversten@manhattan.edu. Manhattan College is located at West 242nd Street near Broadway in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, one mile from the Westchester County line and accessible by MTA subway line 1.

Founded in 1853, Manhattan College is an independent, Catholic, coeducational institution of higher learning offering more than 40 major programs of undergraduate study in the areas of arts, business, education, engineering and science, along with graduate programs in education and engineering. For more information about Manhattan College, visit www.manhattan.edu.