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Virtual Event: Something Beautiful Happened
Emmy Award-winning writer, producer, and author Yvette Manessis Corporon scours the globe to track down the Jewish family that her Greek Orthodox grandmother saved from the Holocaust in 1944. But suddenly, after a glorious reunion with the saved family, her own family falls victim to antisemitism in the U.S. In Something Beautiful Happened: A Story of Survival and Courage in the Face of Evil, the past and present come together in a nuanced, heartfelt story about the power of faith, the importance of kindness, and the courage to stand up for what is right.
Virtual program: Curious George – Saved by Sousa Mendes!
Author-illustrators Hans and Margret Rey fled Nazi-occupied France on handmade bicycles with the manuscript to the first Curious George book among their meager possessions. Thanks to a fortuitous encounter with Aristides de Sousa Mendes, they were all saved. Meet Louise Borden, author of The Journey That Saved Curious George, and Sheila Abranches-Pierce, granddaughter of Sousa Mendes. The program moderator will be Robert Jacobvitz. This will be a fun program, appropriate for all ages.
Virtual program: The Bystander’s Choice
If you are a bystander and witness a crime, should intervention to prevent that crime be a legal obligation? Or is moral responsibility enough? Law professor Amos Guiora, the son of Holocaust survivors, argues provocatively and controversially that we must make the obligation to intervene the law, and thus non-intervention a crime. He will be in dialogue with Holocaust historians Dr. Victoria Barnett, formerly of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, and Dr. Mordecai Paldiel, formerly of Yad Vashem. Following our recent program on what makes a hero, we will examine the dilemma of the bystander and take a close look at the famous assertion by Edmund Burke: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
Virtual program: Safe Haven in Iowa, an Untold Story
Did you know that there were Jewish refugees in Iowa during World War II? Tune in to learn about this fascinating and untold story. Meet Edith Lichtenstein Froehlig, originally from Limburg, Germany, who was brought by the Quakers to Iowa, where she lived in a converted schoolhouse called Scattergood Hostel as one of 185 Jewish refugees. She will be in dialogue with Dr. Michael Luick-Thrams, the world’s expert on this story, and they will take your questions. We will also watch a short film on this history called Out of Hitler’s Reach produced by the PBS station in Iowa. (more…)
Virtual program: Women of Valor — Stories of Resistance in Paris
4 PM US EASTERN TIME, 1 PM US PACIFIC TIME
In February 1943, at the height of the deportations from France, a daring group of Jewish and Christian women banded together to stage the largest single rescue operation in wartime Paris. Please join Anne Nelson, author of Suzanne’s Children, and Joanne Gilbert, author of Women of Valor, as they describe these women — including Suzanne Spaak, Sophie Schwartz, Frida Wattenberg and others — who risked everything to fight back against evil.
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The Jewish James Bond and Other Heroes
Go behind the scenes and get to know some of the colorful characters who participated in Operation Zebra — the 1947-49 mission to help rescue newborn Israel’s 600,000 Jews and provide a safe haven for Holocaust survivors. The heroes include the Jewish James Bond, Yehuda Arazi, the operation’s whimsical chief pilot, Sam Lewis, and its cowgirl flight instructor, Elynor Rudnick. Meet Arazi’s grandson and namesake, and Lewis’ daughter, who was a teenager during the operation, as well as Boaz Dvir, who captured their tales in the 2015 award-winning PBS documentary A Wing and a Prayer and the 2020 critically acclaimed book Saving Israel. (more…)
In My Mother’s Footsteps
Caught within the ever-approaching steel jaws of Nazi exterminators, 19-year-old Leah Steppel from Dusseldorf successfully escapes Europe via Portugal — thanks to a precious visa from Aristides de Sousa Mendes. More than seven decades later, her daughter Rebecca Barber retraces Leah’s footsteps to freedom. (more…)
Resistance of the Heart – A Valentine’s Day Program
The Rosenstrasse Protest is the nearly-forgotten story of a group of women in Berlin who faced down the Third Reich — and won! In February of 1943, several hundred non-Jewish wives of Jewish men faced down Hitler’s genocidal policy and the SS to secure the release of their captured husbands. Nathan Stoltzfus is the world’s expert on this history, and he will be in dialogue with historian Mordecai Paldiel as well as Ruth Wiseman, whose family lived this story. (more…)
Lessons in Moral Courage — Irshad Manji in conversation with Abraham H. Foxman
1 PM LOS ANGELES • 4 PM NEW YORK
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Irshad Manji is the winner of Oprah Winfrey’s first annual Chutzpah Award for boldness. As founder of the Moral Courage Project, Irshad equips people to do the right thing in the face of fear. She discovered her mission through a deeply personal journey. In 2003, Irshad released The Trouble with Islam Today, an open letter to her fellow Muslims about why anti-Semitism and other prejudices must end in the name of Allah. In 2007, Irshad turned the book into an Emmy-nominated PBS film, Faith Without Fear. And in 2011, she published Allah, Liberty & Love, which shows how Islam can be reinterpreted for the 21st century. Along the way, Irshad became a professor of moral courage — first teaching at New York University and now lecturing with Oxford University’s Initiative for Global Ethics and Human Rights. Irshad’s latest book is Don’t Label Me. In our deeply polarized time, she says, standing for what’s right is not enough to make progress. We must also learn to engage the “Other.” Labeling is easy. But listening is a form of moral courage. (more…)
Shalom Uganda
11 AM LOS ANGELES • 2 PM NEW YORK
7 PM LISBON • 9 PM UGANDA
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Learn about a small Ashkenazi Jewish community that settled in the African country of Uganda after World War II. With no rabbi or Jewish infrastructure, this community of twenty-three families formed a cohesive group that celebrated all Jewish festivals together and upheld their Jewish identity. There is also a small but vibrant indigenous Jewish Ugandan community that survived persecution under the regime of Idi Amin and that survives to this day. Meet representatives of both communities.