2025 Powell-Heller Conference for Holocaust Education:
“Latin America and the Holocaust”
November 5-7, 2025
Thanks to the generosity of donors this event is free and open to the public.
Between 1933 and 1945, approximately 100,000 Jewish refugees emigrated to various Latin American nations. Although the field of Holocaust studies has continued to expand in its examination of the wide-ranging impact that Nazi persecution of the Jewish people, most studies have tended to neglect the role of Latin American countries in the Holocaust. For some scholars of Latin American history, Jews are only a small fraction of the population and are frequently omitted in historical accounts. For many Holocaust scholars, the tendency has been to focus on European-centric stories except to perhaps mention Nazis who escaped to Latin American countries post-WWII. Our conference aims to expose the rich history of Jews in Latin America, with a primary focus on what was happening regarding Jews attempting to flee Nazi persecution, what happened in post-WWII resettlements of refugees and survivors, and how memories of the Holocaust are invoked today in many Latin American countries.
PLU’s mission to support the education of our students and larger community on issues of diversity and justice are intimately connected to the study of the tragedy of the Holocaust. Students can see that marginalization of a minority group, such as the Jews of Nazi Germany, can lead to life-threatening situations culminating in one of the world’s modern genocides. Issues of distortion and denial make the process of reconciliation and healing less likely and serve as an insult to the memory of all those whose lives were destroyed in the Holocaust.