The lessons of the Holocaust offer an unparalleled opportunity to address the cultural, educational, and civic needs of our diverse community. The Harriet and Kenneth Kupferberg Holocaust Center (KHC) is neither a museum nor a library: We are a learning laboratory where students, survivors, and community members learn through their hearts, minds, and actions.
Part of the Drs. Bebe and Owen Bernstein Lecture Series
NEH 2017-18 Event: Complicity & Collaboration
Prominent scholar and UCLA faculty member Dr. Aliza Luft will discuss her research on rescue behavior during mass atrocities and genocide. Her presentation will focus on decision-making in violent contexts and how people shift stances from support for state violence to resistance over time. Luft draws on case studies from her research in France, where people were both complicit in genocide and resistant to it at alternate moments in time. She will discuss the role of Catholic bishops – a highly visible, majority population in France, and their activism which took place in large cities where they were under heavy watch by Vichy and the Nazis. Reflecting on the KHC exhibit, Conspiracy of Goodness, she will show the distinctions from that of Le Chambon, where a minority group of protestants engaged in rescue behaviors far from the center of the regime’s activities.
Luft is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at UCLA. In addition to her academic scholarship, she has served as a research assistant for the United Nations Counter-Terrorism Executive Directorate, the Transitional Justice Database Project, and as a consultant for the United States Agency for International Development.
This event is FREE, but registration is requested. Visit: https://wartime-defection-resistance-and-rescue.eventbrite.com
To view the 2017-2018 KHC/NEH Colloquium Series of Events, please click here
Read More
The Harriet and Kenneth Kupferberg Holocaust Center is proud to unveil its newest original exhibition that tells the story of how an isolated Huguenot community in the Haute-Loire region, saved 3,500 Jews from Nazi Germany and the soldiers of Vichy France. Villagers of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon and the surrounding villages, joined together to conceal, rescue, and provide false documentation for Jews and French Resistance fighters, at great risk to their own lives. They offered sanctuary and kindness to refugees, while they, the Huguenots (French Calvinists), had lived under oppression themselves and were targets of religious persecution for hundreds of years. The unwavering willingness of the villagers of Le Chambon to help those in need is a testament to the power of the human spirit and will serve as an outstanding model to students and other visitors about our responsibility to respond…
Or view past exhibits
To use the lessons of the Holocaust to educate current and future generations about the ramifications of unbridled prejudice, racism, and stereotyping.
In addition to student fellowships, survivor discussion groups and docent training, the KHC hosts dozens of events each year to investigate the Holocaust and global violence as historical and present-day realities.
learn moreThe KHC has, over the course of 35 years, received artifacts from Queens and Long Island survivors and their families, including survivor oral histories, films and videos, primary sources from World War II, and an extensive library.
learn moreThrough exhibits, events, archival resources and survivor speakers, students and the broader community grasp the significance of the past, the dangers that remain, and a sense of themselves as advocates for social change.
learn morePlease help ensure that the voices and lessons of the past continue to shape current and future generations.
Donate Now
