The Max Kade Center for German Studies presents an exhibition and series of programs in remembrance of the Holocaust and welcomes Professor Erhard Roy Wiehn as the 2006-07 Distinguished Max Kade Professor.
OCTOBER 23 – 27, 2006
WHERE: Gendebien Room, Skillman Library (lunch provided)
WHEN: MONDAY, October 23 @ 12 noon
WHO: Prof. Erhard Roy Wiehn
Roy Wiehn will talk about the many Holocaust memoirs he has helped shepherd into print as a way of making certain that the past is not forgotten. He will talk about the painful process of memory in Germany over the last six decades and why it is important to make remembering a conscious act. (A selection of memoirs that Professor Wiehn was instrumental in publishing will be on view in Skillman Library’s Periodical Room).
ABOUT ERHARD ROY WIEHN: Roy Wiehn was professor in the Dept. of History and Sociology of Konstanz in Germany from 1974 to 2002, where he was also chairman and dean of the social sciences faculty in the 1980s and 1990s. He received the President’s Award of the University of Tel Aviv, Israel and honorary doctorates from the National Economics University and the Taras-Schewtschenko University, both in Kiev, Ukraine. He was an advisor to the Friedrich-Naumann Foundation from 1974 to 2002 and president of the German-Israel Society of the Lake Constance region for 18 years, beginning in the 1970s. Prof. Wiehn has published widely in the field of Jewish history and Jewish studies and is best known as the editor and publisher of numerous memoirs by Holocaust survivors.
Opening Reception & Exhibition
WHERE: Gendebien Room, Skillman Library (lunch provided)
WHEN: MONDAY, Oct. 23 from 5 to 7 PM
WHO:Prof. Margarete Lamb-Faffelberger, President Dan Weiss, Dr. Diane Shaw, and Dr. Leslie Muhlfelder.
An exhibit commemorating the life of Ludwig Muhlfelder (1924-2004), who, as a young boy in the town of Suhl in central Germany, witnessed the increasing anti-Semitism of the Nazi government, including the burning of his synagogue and the imprisonment of his father in Buchenwald. After two failed attempts, he was finally granted a visa in September 1939, allowing him to immigrate to the US. After volunteering for service with the US Army in WWII, he embarked on a successful career as an aerospace engineer, with sixteen patents to his credit. In 1995, he wrote his autobiography at the urging of Roy Wiehn, and in 1996 returned to his hometown of Suhl for an emotional reunion.
WHERE: 104 Kirby Hall (reception following)
WHEN: TUESDAY, October 24 @ 8PM
WHO: Prof. Roy Wiehn
Roy Wiehn’s Max Kade Lecture focuses on the murder of 33,771 Jewish men, women, and children by Nazi soldiers in a ravine located on the edge of Kiev, called “Babi Yar,” in September 1941. Although largely forgotten today, Wiehn will stress the importance of remembering this event because, although not the first of the crimes of the Third Reich, the massacre was certainly the beginning of the real Holocaust – the Jewish Shoah – and deserves the name “Shoah of Babi Yar.”
WHERE: Gendebien Room, Skillman Library (lunch provided)
WHEN: WENDESDAY, Oct. 25 @ 12 noon
WHO: President Dan Weiss
Dan Weiss will speak on his research to uncover the truth about Masha Bruskina, a seventeen-year-old Jewish girl, who was one of the first Russians to be publicly executed by the Germans during WWII. Chilling historical photographs show Bruskina and two men being led to the gallows in the occupied city of Minsk on October 26, 1941. For years, Bruskina’s identity had been listed only as “unknown,” and even after evidence pointed to her identity, there was reluctance to recognize her. President Weiss examines the historical significance of the execution and the implications of Bruskina’s hidden identity.