Holocaust and Genocide Awareness Week

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Holocaust and Genocide Awareness Week Events 2023

Monday, March 27 at 5:30 pm, John D. O’Bryant African American-Institute, 40 Leon St., 2nd floor.

Holocaust and Genocide Awareness Week Opening Reception, featuring a presentation by 2022-2023 Holocaust Legacy Foundation Gideon Klein Scholar Ethan Rogers ’25, Tracing Expressiveness: Illustrated Emotions in Terezin’s Secret Synagogue.

The Secret Synagogue of Terezin was created in the Nazi camp out of a hidden storage room, and largely unknown until after the fall of communism in 1989, when the building’s owner shared its existence with visitors to the camp, for a fee. Ethan Rogers undertook extensive research on the synagogue and its creator, the artist Artur Berlinger. He will present his research along with his virtual re-creation of the synagogue as it probably looked while in use in the Nazi camp, and discuss the artistic and spiritual meaning of the decorative murals.

Ethan Rogers is a third-year student pursuing a Bachelor of Science in Architecture with a minor in Urban Landscape Studies. He grew up on Long Island, New York, and is an avid foodie and city-goer who enjoys listening to comedy specials and going to Broadway shows. Around Boston he is involved with Northeastern Hillel and the architecture club AIAS, volunteers at Boston Building Resources, and enjoys walking on the Charles River Esplanade.

Presented by the Holocaust and Genocide Awareness Committee, Humanities Center, Jewish Studies Program.

Wednesday, March 29th, 12 noon, Cabral Center, 40 Leon St.

Featuring: Philip N. Backstrom Jr. Witness Testimony with Elisabeth Dopazo

Elisabeth Dopazo was born in Saxonburg, Saxony in 1929. Her parents were both arrested by the Nazi government in the 1930s, and during the war her mother was imprisoned and her father executed. Ms. Dopazo lives in Brookline Massachusetts and has been a speaker for Facing History and Ourselves.

Presented by the Holocaust and Genocide Awareness Committee, the Jewish Studies Program, and the Humanities Center.

Thursday, March 30th, 6:30 pm, ISEC 102, 805 Columbus Ave.

30th Annual Robert Salomon Morton Lecture, The Perils of Memory: Does Remembering Genocide Make Us Safer?

Featuring: Philip Gourevitch

Drawing on his groundbreaking reporting from Rwanda, and in the light of Putin’s war on Ukraine, author and longtime New Yorker staff writer, Philip Gourevitch, considers whether the moral and political lessons we draw from the Holocaust can, in fact, safeguard us against repeating the past. Please join us for a vital discussion of the uses and abuses of memory and history.

Philip Gourevitch is a long-time staff writer at The New Yorker, and former editor of The Paris Review. He is the author of Standard Operating Procedure / The ballad of Abu Ghraib (2008), A Cold Case (2001), and We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families: stories from Rwanda (1998), which won numerous honors, including the National Book Critics Circle Award, and was counted by The Guardian among the 100 best nonfiction books of all time. In 2024, he will publish a new book: You Hide That You Hate Me And I Hide That I Know.

Presented by Holocaust and Genocide Awareness Committee, Jewish Studies Program, Humanities Center, School of Journalism, Department of History.

Sponsored by the Robert S. Morton Lectures and Events Endowed Fund.

–HOLOCAUST AND GENOCIDE AWARENESS WEEK EVENTS ARE SPONSORED BY THE COLLEGE OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES, THE JEWISH STUDIES PROGRAM, THE HUMANITIES CENTER, AND THE HOLOCAUST AND GENOCIDE AWARENESS COMMITTEE.