FDR and the Holocaust: A talk by Richard Breitman
Thursday, March 14, 2013 at 7:30 p.m.
Smathers Library Grand Reading Room (2nd floor)
Richard Breitman, American University, is the author of The Architect of Genocide: Himmler and the Final Solution, Official Secrets: What the Germans Planned, What the British and Americans Knew and American Refugee Policy and European Jewry, 1933-1945.
Made possible by the Norman and Irma Braman Chair for Holocaust Studies and The Isser and Rae Price Library of Judaica at the George A. Smathers Libraries
Free and open to the public.
The talk is a prelude to the exhibit Testimony in Smathers Library’s 2nd floor gallery from April 2-June 14, 2013.
Inspired by recent donations to the Isser and Rae Price Library of Judaica, Testimony showcases primary sources that bear undeniable witness to the fact of the Holocaust. Featuring the last letters from victims of the Nazi terror before they were murdered, the papers and autobiography of a concentration camp survivor, photographic evidence of the camps taken by the U.S. Signal Corps in 1945, newspapers published during the Second World War, memoirs produced by survivors and dispersed communities in the decades following, as well as unique responses to the Holocaust manifested in later works of art. Testimony documents the impact of the Holocaust on the victims and survivors, and it gives voice to the immense aftershock felt by subsequent generations.
Curated by Rebecca Jefferson, who will present a gallery talk highlighting items in the exhibit, on Thursday, April 4, 3013 from 6:00-7:00 p.m. in the gallery.
RELATED EVENT:
The ACCENT Speaker’s Bureau and Jewish Awareness Month at the University of Florida will bring Nobel Prize winner and writer Elie Wiesel to campus on March 12.
Wiesel, who was taken to Auschwitz by the Nazis during World War II at the age of 15, retells his Holocaust story in his internationally acclaimed memoir “Night.”
Using his experiences as a foundation, Wiesel has become an internationally known advocate for Israel and an advocate for other persecuted groups, including the Kurds and victims of genocide in Africa. President Jimmy Carter appointed Wiesel as the chairman of the President’s Commission on the Holocaust, and he later became the founding chairman of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council.
Author of more than 50 books, including “A Beggar in Jerusalem,” Wiesel has received various awards including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the U.S. Congressional Gold Medal and, the most prestigious of all, the Nobel Prize for Peace.
Wiesel will be talking telling UF students about his experiences as a Holocaust survivor, his Jewish identity and his writing career.
The program starts at 8 p.m. at the Phillips Center for the Performing Arts and will be followed by a question-and-answer session. Doors open at 7 p.m., and admission is free and open to the public. Photography will not be allowed during the program, but press may record and photograph during the first five minutes of the remarks.