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Jesse Owens, the son of Alabama sharecroppers, was the Olympic champion who defeated Nazi ideology in Hitler’s stadium. He later served on the Board of the National Conference of Christians and Jews. Meet his grandson, Stuart Owen Rankin, who will be in dialogue with Lori Weintrob, historian and Director of the Wagner College Holocaust Center. Representing the International Olympics Committee on the panel is Anita L. DeFrantz, a US Olympic medalist and Vice-President of the IOC. (more…)
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An intimate and unexpected documentary about the private life of Theodor Herzl. To Eli Tal-El, a Jerusalem documentary filmmaker, Herzl is a washed-out icon. In the eyes of his Canadian brother-in-law David Matlow, one of the world’s most avid collectors of Herzl memorabilia, Herzl is an inspiring superstar. An unconventional documentary, this film is a personal look at the man who launched a nation. Joining the panel will be Herzl’s biographer Derek Penslar and sociologist Shulamit Reinharz. (more…)
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The documentary film The Legacy of Aristides asks the question: What is the legacy of Aristides de Sousa Mendes today? We are presenting a bilingual dialogue with the filmmaker, Patrick Séraudie. He will be in conversation with two of the subjects of the film: Gerald Mendes, grandson of Aristides de Sousa Mendes, and Cookie Fischer, whose mother was a Sousa Mendes visa recipient. (more…)
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Little Jerusalem: that is how the locals refer to the town of Pitigliano in southern Tuscany, because of its striking resemblance to Israel’s ancient city. Through the medieval stone walls, the fascinating story of centuries of harmonious co-existence between Jews and Christians is told for the first time, including the heroic acts performed by the locals during the Holocaust. (more…)
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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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On this Chanukah program we honor Judy Feld Carr, a woman of exceptional courage and valor who chose to make a difference. Over a 28-year period, she secretly brought to freedom 3228 Jews prohibited from emigrating from Syria. Working with smugglers and bribing government officials, she removed most of that community from veritable bondage. In addition, she clandestinely smuggled out of that country priceless ancient articles of Jewish worship. Until Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and the Israeli Intelligence Organizations publicly acclaimed her activities, the world, including the Jewish world, had no inkling of this Canadian Jewish woman’s covert life. She is the subject of historian Dr. Harold Troper’s The Rescuer, now in its second edition. The rescue was the best-kept secret in the Jewish world. (more…)
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This program is about African-Americans and Jewish-Americans who have been involved in each other’s historic struggles. Meet Susannah Heschel, daughter of the Jewish civil rights hero Abraham Joshua Heschel. And meet Alexis Scott, daughter of the African-American liberator and Holocaust educator William Alexander Scott III. The discussion will be moderated by the filmmaker Shari Rogers, whose documentary Shared Legacies will be shown.
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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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Otto von Habsburg, the last Crown Prince of Austria, was on Hitler’s enemy list. He and his family were rescued with visas from Aristides de Sousa Mendes. During the war he was a leading figure in the war against Hitler, and after the war he was one of the founders of the European Parliament.
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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…)