OSU Holocaust Program Set

By JEWISH REVIEW

article created on: 2009-04-01T00:00:00

Founded in 1987, the Oregon State Holocaust Memorial Program this year looks at Germans and the Holocaust: Then and Now in a series of programs April 20-23.

On Monday, April 20, at 7:30 p.m., in the C&E Auditorium (LaSells Stewart Center, OSU campus), Claudia Koonz will speak on “How the Nazis Made Anti-Semitism Respectable.”

Koonz, a professor of history at Duke University, is well known for her scholarship on Nazi Germany, on the history of German women during the Nazi period, and on the Holocaust. She is the author of two well-known and highly influential books, “Mothers in the Fatherland: Women, the Family and Nazi Politics,” and “The Nazi Conscience.”

In her talk at OSU, Koonz will deal with the question, How did it happen that Germany, the nation celebrated as the home of “philosophers and poets,” became the site of an unprecedented drive to exterminate every Jew in Europe? She will investigate the moral transformation that prepared most Germans to participate in crimes against Jews with impunity. 

Using images from films, humor magazines, racial science textbooks and mass market print media, she will examine the sophisticated persuasive techniques that prepared ordinary Germans to ostracize, blackmail, rob and expel fellow citizens with Jewish ancestors.

On Tuesday, April 21, at 7:30 p.m.,  in the Memorial Union Lounge (OSU campus), Rolf Schuette will speak on “The Holocaust’s Role in the Identity of Today’s Germans.”

While it is a fact of history that the Holocaust was bred in Germany, it is also a fact that since 1945, and especially since the 1980s, successive German governments and communities have done much to try to atone. Germany is now the site of thousands of memorials to victims of the Holocaust, and schoolchildren are educated about the assault on European Jewry.

Schuette, the German Consul-General in San Francisco, has a long and distinguished career in the German diplomatic service, having served in Russia and Israel, as well as at the United Nations. He is well known as a speaker on human rights issues. He has worked extensively to promote German-Jewish dialogue and his publications include an important essay, “German-Jewish Relations, Today and Tomorrow,” which was published by the American Jewish Committee in 2005.

On Wednesday, April 22, at 7:30 p.m., in Austin Auditorium (LaSells Stewart Center, OSU campus), George Wittenstein will deliver “A Personal Account of the White Rose.”

The White Rose consisted of a small number of friends, most of them medical students in the University of Hamburg, who dared to speak out against the Nazi regime during the war.  Unlike other anti-Nazi groups in Germany—and there were few of them in any case—the White Rose denounced the persecution and killing of the Jews. Although calling for the overthrow of the Nazi regime, the group espoused a non-violent philosophy. During 1942, the members spread their views through a series of pamphlets. When the government discovered the identity of those who were involved in writing and distributing the pamphlets, it moved against them, and six, including Sophie and Hans Scholl, were executed.

Wittenstein was actively involved with the White Rose and narrowly escaped Germany with his life. He subsequently traveled to the United States, completed his medical studies, and went on to become a practitioner and professor of cardiovascular surgery. In his talk at OSU, which he will illustrate with photographs that relate to his theme, Wittenstein will discuss the history of the White Rose.

On Thursday, April 23, at 7 p.m., in the Kelley Engineering Room 1001 (OSU campus), the film “Sophie Scholl: The Final Days” will be shown.

Sophie Scholl and her brother Hans were central figures in a group that resisted the Nazis under the name of “The White Rose.”  Sophie was apprehended and tried for treason in early 1943, and was beheaded in February of that year. The courage that she showed, even during her trial and her last hours, has helped to accord her an almost legendary status, especially in Germany and Europe, as reflected in the choice of a major German magazine to designate her “the greatest woman of the Twentieth Century.”
 
The Final Days, which stars Julia Jentsch as Sophie—Jentsch called it “an honor” to have this role—won a number of awards after its release in 2005.  It will be shown at OSU in its original German, with subtitles.
 
For more information, visit oregonstate.edu/dept/holocaust/ or call 541-737-1265.