Book Talk

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…)

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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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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1 PM LOS ANGELES • 4 PM NEW YORK

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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…)

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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1 PM LOS ANGELES • 4 PM NEW YORK

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In the 1930s, when nations of the world were closing their doors to refugee Jews fleeing the growing horror of Hitler’s Germany, one small island nation in the Pacific, the Philippines, chose to do what others would not — save those lives. This rescue, orchestrated and empowered through President Manuel Quezon, gave the refugees a new welcoming homeland as the Filipino people opened their hearts and accepted them within the fabric of Philippine society. Today a monument to this rescue action stands in Rishon Le Zion, Israel.

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1 PM LOS ANGELES • 4 PM NEW YORK

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Richard Hurowitz‘s new book In the Garden of the Righteous from HarperCollins chronicles the heroes and heroines who not only rescued Jews from the Holocaust but also, as Golda Meir once said, “saved hope and faith in the human spirit.”

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1 PM LOS ANGELES • 4 PM NEW YORK

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Compared to Casablanca by The Washington Post, this is a page–turning story of a group of resistance workers who rescued downed Allied fighter pilots and spirited them through France and into safety in Spain during World War II. 

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1 PM LOS ANGELES • 4 PM NEW YORK

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Join Samuel Freedman and Jane Eisner as they discuss Freedman’s new book, Into the Bright Sunshine: Young Hubert Humphrey and the Fight for Civil Rights. Their discussion will focus on Humphrey’s fight against antisemitism in post-World War II America.

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