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4/7/2004
Contact:
K.E. Schwab -- 724-738-2199; e-mail:
karl.schwab@sru.edu
EXPERIENCE OF HUNGARIAN JEWS AT WAR’S
ENDTOPIC OF SRU HOLOCAUST
REMEMBRANCE
SLIPPERY ROCK, Pa. – Noted historian and award-winning
lecturer Stephen Berk of Union College will detail “The
Experience of the Hungarian Jews in the Holocaust” when
Slippery Rock University’s department of government and
public affairs presents its 10th Annual Holocaust
Remembrance Program at 3 p.m. April 14.
The
free lecture, open to the public, will be held in Miller
Auditorium. This year’s program is dedicated to the late Dr.
Sylvan Cohen who initiated SRU’s annual remembrance
program.
Berk’s
address will detail the final days of World War II, including
German leader Adolf Eichmann’s order to move some 600,000
Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where nearly all perished.
Berk explains that despite Hitler’s death and the nearing
Nazi’s loss, Eichmann interpreted Hitler’s will to
mandate continued mass murder.
Former
chair of the history department at Union College, Berk was also
involved in his university as director of the Program in Russian
and Eastern European Studies and faculty advisor to the Jewish
Student Organization. His classes are considered some of the most
popular offered at Union. He is the author of “Year in
Crisis, Year of Hope: Russian Jewry and the Pogroms of
1881-1882” published in 1985. He is currently working on
“Our People Are Your People: American Jewry and the Struggle
for Civil Rights 1954-1965,” which will provide a discussion
of myths and misunderstandings that surround the black-Jewish
relationship.
He
has served as a consultant to the Wiesenthal Holocaust Center in
Los Angeles and produced a six-hour audiotape of his lectures on
the Holocaust. Berk holds the Florence B. Sherwood Chair in History
and Culture and in 1996 was presented the Holocaust Memorial Award
from the Holocaust Survivors and Friends Education Center for his
“dedication to understanding and education as a worldwide
lecturer and spellbinding speaker on the lessons of the Holocaust
and its meaning for today.”
The
program is being organized by Dr. Richard Martin, professor of
government and public affairs.
PN, PGN, WPN, PR, PT,
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