Expert to speak on hidden children of the Holocaust
The University of Colorado Boulder’s Hillel and the Program in Jewish Studies are presentation events for the University of Colorado Boulder’s 28th Annual Holocaust Awareness Week.
The date this year has been moved to coincide with the United Nation’s International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which is Jan. 27 and commemorates the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau.
With the creation of International Holocaust Remembrance in Day in 2005, every member nation of the United Nations has an obligation to honor the memory of Holocaust victims and develop educational programs as part of an international resolve to help prevent future acts of genocide.
CU’s 2012 Holocaust Awareness Week will also adopt the U.N.’s theme this year which will focus on the “Children and the Holocaust.” Some children managed to survive in hiding, others fled to safe havens before it was too late, while many others suffered medical experiments or were sent to the gas chambers immediately upon arriving at the death camps.
Highlighting the impact of mass violence on children, this theme has important implications for the 21st century. CU’s keynote lecture, “Hidden Children of the Holocaust” on Thursday, Jan. 26 at 7 p.m. in University Memorial Center room 235 features University of California Davis professor and author Diane Wolf.
Anne Frank has largely shaped the image of the Jewish child hiding from the Nazis, yet her experience was not the norm. Wolf’s keynote lecture is based on her book “Beyond Anne Frank: Hidden Children and Postwar Families in Holland,” in which she draws on interviews with seventy Jewish men and women who, as children, were placed in non-Jewish families during the Nazi occupation of Holland.
Wolf analyzes the experiences of these Holocaust survivors, which were diametrically opposed to those who suffered in concentration camps. Although the war years were tolerable for most of these children, it was the end of the war that marked the beginning of a traumatic time, especially if parents survived, leading many of those interviewed to remark, "My war began after the war."
Diane Wolf is professor of sociology and director of Jewish Studies at the University of California, Davis. She has authored “From Auschwitz to Ithaca: The Transnational Journey of Jake Geldwert” and “Factory Daughters.” She edited “Feminist Dilemmas in Fieldwork’ and co-edited “Sociology Confronts the Holocaust: Memories and Identities in Jewish Diasporas.”
Her current research focuses on American cultural memory of the Holocaust, children of Holocaust survivors, and comparing the religious practices of secular Jews in both Israel and the U.S.
CU’s 28th Annual Holocaust Awareness Week includes film screenings and testimonies from survivors. The schedule of events began Tuesday, Jan. 24. A complete schedule of events can be found at www.hillelcolorado.org and http://jewishstudies.colorado.edu/.
Holocaust Awareness Week is presented by the University of Colorado Boulder’s Hillel and co-sponsored by the Program in Jewish Studies at CU, Menorah: Arts, Culture and Education at the Boulder JCC, the Cultural Events Board at CU, and Movers: Art and Conscience community collaborative series.
Diane Wolf’s visit has been made possible by generous donors to CU’s Hillel, the Program in Jewish Studies and the Legacy Heritage Jewish Studies Project, directed by the Association for Jewish Studies. Support for the Legacy Heritage Jewish Studies Project is generously provided by Legacy Heritage Fund Limited.
January 2012
The date this year has been moved to coincide with the United Nation’s International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which is Jan. 27 and commemorates the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau.
With the creation of International Holocaust Remembrance in Day in 2005, every member nation of the United Nations has an obligation to honor the memory of Holocaust victims and develop educational programs as part of an international resolve to help prevent future acts of genocide.
CU’s 2012 Holocaust Awareness Week will also adopt the U.N.’s theme this year which will focus on the “Children and the Holocaust.” Some children managed to survive in hiding, others fled to safe havens before it was too late, while many others suffered medical experiments or were sent to the gas chambers immediately upon arriving at the death camps.
Highlighting the impact of mass violence on children, this theme has important implications for the 21st century. CU’s keynote lecture, “Hidden Children of the Holocaust” on Thursday, Jan. 26 at 7 p.m. in University Memorial Center room 235 features University of California Davis professor and author Diane Wolf.
Anne Frank has largely shaped the image of the Jewish child hiding from the Nazis, yet her experience was not the norm. Wolf’s keynote lecture is based on her book “Beyond Anne Frank: Hidden Children and Postwar Families in Holland,” in which she draws on interviews with seventy Jewish men and women who, as children, were placed in non-Jewish families during the Nazi occupation of Holland.
Wolf analyzes the experiences of these Holocaust survivors, which were diametrically opposed to those who suffered in concentration camps. Although the war years were tolerable for most of these children, it was the end of the war that marked the beginning of a traumatic time, especially if parents survived, leading many of those interviewed to remark, "My war began after the war."
Diane Wolf is professor of sociology and director of Jewish Studies at the University of California, Davis. She has authored “From Auschwitz to Ithaca: The Transnational Journey of Jake Geldwert” and “Factory Daughters.” She edited “Feminist Dilemmas in Fieldwork’ and co-edited “Sociology Confronts the Holocaust: Memories and Identities in Jewish Diasporas.”
Her current research focuses on American cultural memory of the Holocaust, children of Holocaust survivors, and comparing the religious practices of secular Jews in both Israel and the U.S.
CU’s 28th Annual Holocaust Awareness Week includes film screenings and testimonies from survivors. The schedule of events began Tuesday, Jan. 24. A complete schedule of events can be found at www.hillelcolorado.org and http://jewishstudies.colorado.edu/.
Holocaust Awareness Week is presented by the University of Colorado Boulder’s Hillel and co-sponsored by the Program in Jewish Studies at CU, Menorah: Arts, Culture and Education at the Boulder JCC, the Cultural Events Board at CU, and Movers: Art and Conscience community collaborative series.
Diane Wolf’s visit has been made possible by generous donors to CU’s Hillel, the Program in Jewish Studies and the Legacy Heritage Jewish Studies Project, directed by the Association for Jewish Studies. Support for the Legacy Heritage Jewish Studies Project is generously provided by Legacy Heritage Fund Limited.
—Program in Jewish Studies
January 2012