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October 2021
free but registration required

Miep Gies and the Rescue of Anne Frank’s Diary

October 24, 2021
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11 AM LOS ANGELES • 2 PM NEW YORK • 7 PM LONDON

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This program pays tribute to the woman who sheltered Anne Frank for three years and then rescued her now-famous diary. Miep Gies oversaw the “secret annex” where the Frank family was housed, while sheltering another Jewish person in her own home.  Meet Gillian Walnes Perry who knew Miep Gies well and accompanied her to the Academy Awards and Meeg Pincus who wrote a delightful book on Miep Gies for young people. (more…)

November 2021
free but registration required

Fleeing Mussolini — Italian-Jewish Refugees in the United States

November 28, 2021
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1 PM LOS ANGELES • 4 PM NEW YORK

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This program is about the exile of Italian Jews to America. Fleeing Mussolini’s racial laws, roughly two thousand Italian Jews landed in America in the 1930s and 40s. They didn’t fit in with either the Italian-American community or the Jewish-American community, yet many Italian Jewish refugees became leaders in their professions and productive contributors to American life.
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January 2022

The Lost Book of Moses

January 16, 2022
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1 PM LOS ANGELES • 4 PM NEW YORK

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The Lost Book of Moses: The Hunt for the World’s Oldest Bible, tells the story of the oldest Bible in the world, how its outing as a fraud led to a scandalous death, and why archaeologists now believe it was real — if only they could find it. At once historical drama and modern-day investigation, the book simultaneously explores the 19th-century disappearance of a controversial Bible and the author’s hunt for the manuscript across eight countries and four continents.

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Hans and Sophie Scholl and the White Rose Anti-Nazi Resistance Movement

January 30, 2022
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1 PM LOS ANGELES • 4 PM NEW YORK

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Sophie Scholl was a German student and anti-Nazi political activist, co-founder of the White Rose non-violent resistance group in Nazi Germany. She was convicted of high treason after having been found distributing anti-Nazi leaflets throughout Germany with her brother, Hans Scholl. They dropped hundreds of these leaflets from a high gallery at the University of Munich down on crowds of students milling about below — arguably the only full-fledged public protest against Nazism to have occurred. Meet Holocaust historian and anthropologist Dr. Jud Newborn, the world’s leading authority on Hans and Sophie Scholl, who will inspire you and motivate you to speak truth to power. (more…)

February 2022
free program; registration required

The Border of Truth

February 13, 2022
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1 PM LOS ANGELES • 4 PM NEW YORK

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Like so many children of survivors and refugees, author Victoria Redel grew up in the shadows of her parents’ different escapes from war. For a writer, such ambiguity is rich soil. Redel’s father left Europe with a visa authorized by the Holocaust rescuer Aristides de Sousa Mendes. From Lisbon he embarked on the Portuguese ship the Quanza and was among the 86 passengers retained on the ship in New York and then in Mexico to be sent back to Lisbon and then presumably to be repatriated into Nazi-occupied Belgium. The ship, after refueling with coal in Virginia, was saved by the remarkable efforts of Eleanor Roosevelt in outsmarting Secretary of State Cordell Hull. The Border of Truth is a fictionalized account of this dramatic story. (more…)

March 2022
free program; registration required

“We are all Jews here” — The Story of Roddie Edmonds

March 6, 2022
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1 PM LOS ANGELES • 4 PM NEW YORK

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Footsteps of My Father, an award-winning film produced by the Jewish Foundation for the Righteous, presents the extraordinary story of Master Sergeant Roddie Edmonds, the only American soldier recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations.

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free program; registration required

Shalom China

March 13, 2022
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1 PM LOS ANGELES • 4 PM NEW YORK

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China has a long and storied Jewish history dating back to at least the eighth century. The Jews of Kaifeng, who disappeared through assimilation and intermarriage, are undergoing a resurgence with their descendants reclaiming their lost identities. There were also substantial communities, now lost, in Harbin and Shanghai. Many Austrian Jews also came to Shanghai seeking refuge from Nazi-occupied Europe, rescued by the Holocaust hero Feng Shan Ho, the “angel of Vienna.” Today, the Jewish population in China is approximately 2,500 people. Image: Page with names in Hebrew and Chinese from a Kaifeng Jewish prayer book, collection of the Klau Library in Cincinnati.

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June 2022
tickets by donation

Dr. Ruth Westheimer 94th Birthday Celebration

June 5, 2022
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1 PM LOS ANGELES • 4 PM NEW YORK

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Meet Dr. Ruth Westheimer and join her birthday celebration! Born as Karola Ruth Siegel on June 4, 1928, in Frankfurt, Germany, she grew up as the only child in a privileged Orthodox Jewish family. However, her carefree childhood was violently shattered shortly after Kristallnacht when the SS came to take away her father. In 1939, she was sent on a Kindertransport to Switzerland, where she lived in an orphanage until 1945. She then emigrated to pre-state Israel, became known as Ruth Siegel (dropping the German-sounding Karola) and became a sniper and scout for the Haganah.

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free program; registration required

Daughters of the Inquisition — Retracing Long-Lost Jewish Roots

June 12, 2022
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11 AM LOS ANGELES • 2 PM NEW YORK

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This program features the breathtaking stories and genealogical sleuthwork of Doreen Carvajal and Genie Milgrom, who succeeded in reaching back centuries to find their Jewish ancestors in pre-Inquisition Spain and Portugal. (more…)

July 2022
free program; registration required

Cartoonists Who Spoke Out

July 31, 2022
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1 PM LOS ANGELES • 4 PM NEW YORK

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At a time when too many people looked away, a handful of American political cartoonists used their pens to raise the alarm about the raging Holocaust. These included some of America’s most famous cartoonists, such as the beloved Dr. Seuss, the Washington Post‘s Pulitzer Prize winning Herbert Block (“Herblock”) and many others. Holocaust historian Rafael Medoff, author of We Spoke Out: Comic Books and the Holocaust, will discuss this fascinating subject together with George Gustines, who covers comics and graphic novels for The New York Times.

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