Powell-Heller Conference for Holocaust Education

“Sephardic Jewish Voices and Experiences in the Holocaust”

Schedule

Free and Open to the Public - Registration Required
All Times Posted are Pacific Standard (PST)
7:00 p.m. – Opening Keynote Address: “From the Ottoman Empire to the Holocaust”, AUC Regency Room

Professor Devin Naar, Isaac Alhadeff Professor in Sephardic Studies, Stroum Center for Jewish Studies, University of Washington-Seattle and Sephardic Studies Program Chair

Convener: Dr. Beth Griech-Polelle, Kurt Mayer Chair of Holocaust Studies and Associate Professor of History, PLU

8:15 p.m. – AUC Gray Area
Please join us for a dessert reception following the keynote.
9:30 a.m. – AUC Gray Area
Registration & Coffee
10:00 - 11:30 a.m. – ``Learning about Sephardic Jews and the Holocaust,`` AUC Regency Room

Lori Gerson, Yad Vashem, “Tunisia’s Jewish Boxer: Teaching the Holocaust Through the Human Story”

Lauren Granite, US Program Director, Centropa

Convener: Rabbi Bruce Kadden, PLU

11:30 - 12:00 p.m. – Performance by Kesselgarden of Ladino music, AUC Regency Room

Kesslegarden performers: Carl Shutoff and Laurie Andres

12:00 p.m. - 1:30 p.m. – Lunch, AUC Chris Knutzen
Mayer Summer Research Scholars and Lemkin Essay Contest Winner

Mayer Summer Scholar: Austyn Blair

Mayer Summer Scholar: Eden Standley

Lemkin Essay Contest Winner (Spring 2024): Anna Marko

Convener:  Dr. Rona Kaufman, Professor of English, PLU

1:30 - 1:45 p.m. – Break
1:45 - 3:30 p.m. – ``Stories of Survival,`` AUC Regency Room

Cynthia Flash Hemphill, Seattle-area journalist and publicist, “The Sephardic Anne Frank: How a 9-year old Girl from Rhodes Saved her Family from the Holocaust

Deno Seder, Writer and Media producer in Washington, DC, “Miracle at Zakynthos”

Convener: Heather Mathews, Associate Professor and Chair, Department of Communication, Media, and Design Arts

3:30 - 3:45 p.m. – Break
3:45 - 5:15 p.m. – ``Exploring the experiences of Ladino speakers,`` AUC Regency Room

Canan Bolel, Assistant Professor in Jewish Cultures, Literature, and Languages of the Eastern Mediterranean, University of Washington-Seattle, “Voicing in Ladino, Translating into Ladino: The Sephardic Holocaust on Paper”

Michael Frank, Author of “One Hundred Saturdays: Stella Levi and the Search for a Lost World,” “Co-witnessing: Six years and a Hundred-plus Saturdays with Stella Levi and the Juderia of Rhodes—and beyond”

5:15 - 7:00 p.m. – Dinner Break
7:00 p.m. – Lemkin Lecture Keynote Address: “The Destruction of a Small Sephardi Community in Northern Greece: Demotica in 1943”, AUC Regency Room

Professor Aron Rodrigue, Daniel E. Koshland Professor of Jewish Culture and History, Burke Family Director of the Bing Overseas Studies Program, John Henry Samter Fellow in Undergraduate Education, Stanford University

Convener: Dr. Christopher R. Browning, Frank Porter Graham Professor of History at University of North Carolina

8:15 p.m. – AUC Gray Area
Please join us for a dessert reception following the keynote.
8:30 a.m. – AUC Gray Area
Registration & Coffee
9:15 - 10:25 a.m. – ``Sephardic Jews: Greece, Turkey and Argentina,`` AUC Regency Room

Professor Adriana M. Brodsky, St. Mary’s College of Maryland, “‘En Memoria de Nuestros Hermanos.’: Argentine Sephardim and the Holocaust.”

Joana Bürger, Ph.D. Candidate, University of Washington-Seattle, “Sephardic, Turkish, German, Stateless: A Mixed Family’s Story of Surviving Nazi Germany”

10:30 - 11:15 a.m. – Break
11:15 a.m. - 12:20 p.m. – Survivor's Voices, AUC Regency Room

Andreas Algava, Survivor, “600 Days in Hiding”

12:30 - 1:30 p.m. – Lunch, AUC Chris Knutzen
Celebration of Teaching Holocaust and Genocide Studies at PLU: 50th Anniversary

Featuring: Christopher Browning, Robert P. Ericksen, Molly Loberg ’98 and Laura Brade ’08

To honor the Mayer, Powell and Heller Families and the growth of the HGST program at PLU.

1:30 - 2:30 p.m. – AUC Regency Room ``PLU Alumni Return for our Celebration``

Professor Molly Loberg ’98, Professor of History at California Polytechnic University, “Antisemitism in the Streets of Interwar Berlin”

Professor Laura Brade ’08, Upper School History Teacher at the Park School of Baltimore, “Czechoslovak Humanitarians under Nazi Occupation, 1938-1939”