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.
Past Events › Film Screening
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free program; registration required
“We are all Jews here” — The Story of Roddie Edmonds
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.
tickets by donation
Not Idly By — Peter Bergson, America and the Holocaust
11 AM LOS ANGELES • 2 PM NEW YORK • 9 PM JERUSALEM
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Best Documentary, Toronto Jewish Film Festival
In Not Idly By, filmmaker Pierre Sauvage explores the American reaction to the mass murder of the Jews of Europe. Most Americans believe that we didn’t know about the Holocaust until after it was over. Many assume that we couldn’t have done anything even if we had known. Meet Peter Bergson! A Palestinian Jew who had come to the U.S. in 1940, this firebrand led what came to be known as the Bergson Group, whose protest campaigns helped shatter the silence surrounding the Holocaust. Prominently featured in the film are extended excerpts from the legendary 1943 production by Ben Hecht and Kurt Weill, We Will Never Die. In addition to Sauvage, our panel includes Dr. Rebecca Kook (daughter of Bergson), Dr. Rafael Medoff, and moderator Dr. Mordecai Paldiel.
tickets by donation
Albert Einstein — Still a Revolutionary!
11 AM LOS ANGELES • 2 PM NEW YORK
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Albert Einstein, the most famous scientist of all time, was also the most famous refugee from Nazi-occupied Europe. An anti-war firebrand, Einstein also spoke out on issues ranging from women’s rights and racism to immigration and nuclear arms control. Using a wealth of rarely-seen archival footage, correspondence, and new and illuminating interviews, filmmaker Julia Newman makes the case that Einstein’s example of social and political activism is as important today as are his brilliant, ground-breaking theories.
tickets by donation
Saving Italy: The Rescue of Nazi-Looted Art
12 PM LOS ANGELES • 3 PM NEW YORK
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Beginning in September of 1943, Italy became one of the prime sites for the Nazi plunder of art and cultural treasures. Follow a team of investigative art researchers from the Monuments Men Foundation as they pursue every possible lead to search for artwork and gold looted in Italy by the Nazis. Photo: A painting by Italian master Bernardo Luini stolen by the Hermann Göring Tank Division from the Abbey of Montecassino in Italy and recovered in Altaussee, Austria, 1945. Thomas Carr Howe papers, Archives of American Art.
free program; registration required
The Polish Diplomats who Issued Paraguayan Passports to Save Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe
1 PM LOS ANGELES • 4 PM NEW YORK
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Stefan Ryniewicz was a Polish diplomat and counselor of the Legation of Poland in Bern, Switzerland between 1940 and 1945. He was part of the Ładoś Group that invented a scheme to save Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe by issuing them with passports to Paraguay and then convincing the Paraguayan government to accept their new citizens. Meet his granddaughter, Alexandra MacMurdo Reiter, and author K. Heidi Fishman, whose family was pulled off a transport to Auschwitz on the strength of one of these life-saving passports. Also on the panel is Holocaust historian Dr. Mordecai Paldiel, whose own family was also helped by Ryniewicz.
tickets by donation
Morgenthau
1 PM LOS ANGELES • 4 PM NEW YORK
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This Father’s Day program pays tribute to three generations of men in the Morgenthau family — an American Jewish dynasty whose continual fight for justice has brought them to the forefront of the most dramatic events of the past hundred years. From fighting for international action against the genocide of Armenians on the cusp of WWI, through the efforts to rescue Jews during the Holocaust despite American political obstruction, and on to the struggle to reduce street crime and pioneer the prosecution of white collar corruption in New York City, the trajectory of the three Morgenthau generations epitomizes the American experience and the lasting value of public service.
tickets by donation
The Children of Chabannes
1 PM LOS ANGELES • 4 PM NEW YORK
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The Emmy® Award-winning The Children of Chabannes of Lisa Gossels and Dean Wetherell is the story of how the people in a tiny French village chose action over indifference, and risked their lives and livelihoods, to save more than 400 Jewish refugee children during World War Il. The Children of Chabannes is not only a story about the past. It’s an exploration of moral courage and goodness in the face of evil: of what motivates individuals to take a stand against injustice, bigotry and extremism. Lisa Gossels, whose father was one of the children rescued in Chabannes, will be joined on the panel by Holocaust child refugee Dr. Norman Bikales, who is featured in the film, and Dr. Mordecai Paldiel who oversaw the honoring of the Chabannes rescuers.
tickets by donation
Jan Karski — Humanitarian Hero
1 PM LOS ANGELES • 4 PM NEW YORK
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Jan Karski was a member of the Polish underground during World War II whose mission was to inform the Allied powers of Nazi crimes against the Jews of Europe in order to stop the Holocaust. Karski infiltrated the Warsaw Ghetto and a Nazi Transit Camp and carried his dreadful eyewitness report of the atrocities to Britain and the United States, hoping that it would shake the conscience of the powerful leaders or – as he would later call them – the Lords of Humanity. For his extraordinary efforts Karski was named Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem.
free program; registration required
A New Look at Oskar and Emilie Schindler
1 PM LOS ANGELES • 4 PM NEW YORK
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Dr. Mordecai Paldiel oversaw the granting of the title of Righteous Among the Nations to Oskar and Emilie Schindler in 1993. See a documentary film on the Schindler story. Then learn behind-the-scenes stories from our distinguished panel, including Dr. Paldiel, Schindler’s biographer Dr. David Crowe, and Marie P. Knecht, the daughter of survivors of Schindler’s famous list.