FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Oct. 1, 2007

Contact: K.E. Schwab  

724.738.2199

 karl.schwab@sru.edu

University professor lectures at SRU Holocaust Remembrance 

SLIPPERY ROCK, Pa. – Richard Korb, Columbia University professor of German, will offer a lecture titled “Remembering Forgotten Victims: Thoughts on the Exhibit: ‘Nazi Persecution of Homosexuals 1933-1945’” at Slippery Rock University’s 14th annual Holocaust Remembrance Program.

           The 4 p.m. Nov. 1 lecture is in the Advanced Technology and Science Hall. Richard Martin, professor of political science, is the program organizer.

           Part of Korb’s research has examined how the Nazi ideology held that homosexuality was a hindrance to Nazi policies of racial struggle, but, he found, that a number of influential Brown Shirts were homosexuals, thus thwarting a move against homosexuals.

           “One-hundred thousand German males were arrested on the charges they were homosexuals. Approximately 50,000 were convicted. Most were sentence to Nazi prisons…but 10,000 were sent to concentration and slave labor campus. Approximately 60 percent of those 10,000 died in the campus,” Korb said.”

           “Other homosexual males were drafted or allowed to enlist into the German army where they were most frequently used as ‘shock troops’ sent in advance of regular soldiers to be slaughtered by the anti-axis powers as a way of opening the way of attacking enemy sties with a minimum of ‘regular soldiers’ being at risk,” Korb said.

           His lecture will detail the infamous slave labor camp at Mauthausen in central Austria, a camp Korb calls “one of the most horrific in the Nazi empire.”

           Korb earned his doctorate in Germanic literature at the University of Pittsburgh and joined the Columbia faculty in 1994. He is a senior lecturer and director of the German Language Program at Columbia where he specializes in elementary, intermediate and advanced German courses for undergraduates. 

           In addition he teaches a popular course on Berlin titled “Berlin-Berlin.” He is the author of the fifth edition of Hubert Jannach’s “German for Reading Knowledge.”

Slippery Rock University is Pennsylvania’s premier public residential university. Slippery Rock University provides students with a comprehensive learning experience that intentionally combines academic instruction with enhanced educational and learning opportunities that make a positive difference in their lives.

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