Chhange, the Center for Holocaust, Human Rights & Genocide Education, at Brookdale Community College in Lincroft, will hold its annual Yom HaShoah program featuring renowned historian Deborah Dwork on Tuesday, April 22 at 9:30 a.m.
Dwork is the founding director of the Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity at the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies at the City University of New York Graduate Center.
She will discuss American aid workers who undertook relief and aid efforts across Europe long before the United States entered World War II, a subject Dwork explored in her new book, “Saints and Liars: The Story of Americans Who Saved Refugees from the Nazis.” Dwork used archival documents, including letters, diaries and memos to follow the story of rescue workers in the cities of Vilna, Shanghai, Marseille, and Lisbon who were often followed by Nazis, secretly spirited people across borders and negotiated with government representatives to bring food and other aid to refugees. In the case of women, many did not receive the same support from their relief agencies as men, and if part of a couple, they had to fight to get paid even a low salary. Many of rescuers had their organizations’ backing, but at times they went against their directives to help people find safe haven from persecution.
The free program will explore their experiences, focus on the moral questions they encountered and the devastating decisions they had to make. The program will include music provided by a cellist, violinist and local school choir and a candle-lighting ceremony led by local Holocaust survivors accompanied by service members from Naval Weapons Station Earle.
Registration is required at chhange.org. For information, contact Rachel MacAulay, (732) 224-1889 or rachel.macaulay@chhange.org.
Michael Bornstein, who at the age of four became one of the youngest survivors of Auschwitz, will speak on Yom HaShoah, Thursday, April 24 at 2 p.m. in West Hall on the Edison campus of Middlesex College. The 85-year-old Bornstein will appear with his daughter, Debbie Bornstein Holinstat, with whom he authored the book, “Survivors Club: The True Story of a Very Young Prisoner of Auschwitz.”
Bornstein, one of the last living survivors of the notorious death camp, can be seen in now famous archival footage filmed by liberating Soviet soldiers being carried out of Auschwitz in his grandmother’s arms.
He later earned a doctorate in pharmaceutics and analytical chemistry and spent four decades as a scientist and researcher at various companies, including Johnson & Johnson in New Jersey, rising to become director of technical operations focusing on the majority of his work on helping to develop life-saving antibiotics, hormone growth and cancer treatments. Bornstein Holinstat is a broadcast journalist and producer.
While writing the book Bornstein and his family were stunned to uncover shocking new details about his survival that included a bribery scheme, untold acts of kindness by a German leader and one perfectly-timed brush with illness. The book also recounts how others in his family from Zarki, Poland repeatedly escaped death at the hands of the Nazis. The book is based on Bornstein’s own recollections and extensive interviews with relatives and survivors who knew the family.
For information contact Terrence Corrigan, professor of history and social sciences, at (732) 548-6000, ext. 3088 tcorrigan@middlesexcc.edu. Registration required by scanning QR code on attached flyer.
On March 25, 1942, nearly a thousand young, unmarried Jewish women boarded a train in Poprad, Slovakia believing they were going to work in a factory for a few months and eager to report for government service. Instead, the young women—many of them teenagers—were sent to Auschwitz. Their government paid 500 Reichsmarks, about $200, each for the Nazis to take them as slave labor and only a few survived.
On Sunday, April 27 at 1 p.m. author and award-winning documentary film producer and director Heather Dune Macadam will speak at Temple Shalom in Aberdeen following showing of the film, “999: The Forgotten Girls.” She is also author of the book, “999: The Extraordinary Young Women of the First Official Jewish Transport to Auschwitz.”
The program is being co-sponsored by Adult Jewish Growth, Women of Temple Shalom, Brotherhood, and Chhange, the Center for Holocaust, Human Rights & Genocide Education at Brookdale Community College.
Admission is free and light refreshments will be served. Registration is required at tsoa.ajg@gmail.com. For information contact Belle Liss at
(732) 859-8317 or bpliss@icloud.com.
The Bible has not only been used by conservatives to further political position, but also has been used by progressives to advance many significant social reform movements. On Tuesday, April 29 at 7:30 p.m., Rutgers University’s Allen and Joan Bildner Center for the Study of Jewish Life will present, “The Progressives’ Bible: How Scriptural Interpretation Built a More Just America,” at the Douglass Student Center in New Brunswick.
The annual Toby and Herbert Stolzer Annual Lecture will feature Claudia Setzer, professor of religious studies emerita at Manhattan University and a leading scholar of the Hebrew Bible and New Testament with a focus on early Jewish-Christian relations, the development of belief in resurrection, feminist interpretation of scripture, and the Bible in American culture; and Gary A. Rendsburg, Distinguished Professor of Jewish Studies and History and the Blanche and Irving Laurie Chair in Jewish History at Rutgers University. whose teaching and research runs from ancient and medieval Jewish history and culture, including Bible, ancient Israel, ancient Egypt, Hebrew language, Semitic languages, Dead Sea Scrolls, and medieval Hebrew manuscripts. He is the author of eight books.
The program is free and open to the public, but advance registration is required at bildnercenter.edu. Free campus parking is available.
