Events

Making Global Connections

Fall 2025 Programs

In person programs take place at the Kupferberg Holocaust Center unless noted otherwise. Events are free and open to all, but registration ahead of time is required and visitors must show ID upon entering the campus at Queensborough Community College (QCC). On site parking is available and for directions to QCC’s campus, please visit https://www.qcc.cuny.edu/about/index.html#gettingHere.

For elevator access, enter the QCC Administration building and follow signs for the KHC.

Special Partner Program (Online only)
Between God and Hitler: German Military Chaplains and the Holocaust
Friday, November 7, 2025 at 12:00pm PST/3:00pm EST
Register to watch online: https://ow.ly/TQlf50XaKnX

During World War II, approximately 1,000 Christian chaplains served the German military. What role did these Catholic priests and Protestant pastors play in the Holocaust? Drawing on a wide array of sources — chaplains’ letters, military reports, Jewish testimonies, photographs, and popular culture — this lecture offers insight into how Christian clergy served the cause of genocide. Professor Doris Bergen is the Chancellor Rose and Ray Wolfe Professor of Holocaust Studies at the University of Toronto. Bergen is the author of Twisted Cross: The German Christian Movement in the Third Reich; Between God and Hitler: Military Chaplains in Nazi Germany; and War and Genocide: A Concise History of the Holocaust (4th edition 2024). 

This event is organized by the Ray Wolpow Institute for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Crimes against Humanity. It is co-sponsored by the Holocaust, Genocide, and Interfaith Education Center at Manhattan University; the Harriet & Kenneth Kupferberg Holocaust Center at Queensborough Community College, CUNY; the Sam and Frances Fried Holocaust and Genocide Academy at the University of Nebraska at Omaha; the Reiff Center for Human Rights and Conflict Resolution at Christopher Newport University; and the Foundation for WWU & Alumni. For more information about the Ray Wolpow Institute, visit https://rwi.wwu.edu/.

Holocaust Memory/Kristallnacht Commemoration (In Person & Online)
Fragments of Memory: Lost Notebooks of Children’s Testimonies from the Holocaust
November 10, 2025 at 6:00pm EST
Register to watch online: https://tinyurl.com/bdctyu6f
Register to attend in person: https://tinyurl.com/2k4d5jhs

In 1945, a group of survivors in the Bergen-Belsen Displaced Persons Camp opened several schools for the growing number of orphaned and displaced children at the camp. To help their young charges heal, the teachers encouraged them to write and speak about their traumatic wartime experiences. Recently uncovered notebooks of child testimonies together with fragmentary archival collections scattered across multiple repositories tell the story of this early documentary effort. On the 87th anniversary of the Kristallnacht pogrom that took place November 9 and 10, 1938, join Dr. Regina Kazyulina and Dr. Christopher Mauriello, Directors of Salem State University’s Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, for a discussion about the teachers who did everything in their power, despite their own wartime traumas, to ensure the children’s stories and voices would not be forgotten.

The event is organized by the Harriet & Kenneth Kupferberg Holocaust Center (KHC) and is co-sponsored by the Holocaust & Human Rights Education Center in White Plains; the Center for Genocide and Human Rights Research in Africa and the Diaspora at Northeastern Illinois University; the Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights at Rutgers University; the Holocaust, Genocide & Interfaith Education Center at Manhattan University; the Ray Wolpow Institute for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Crimes Against Humanity at Western Washington University; the Reiff Center for Human Rights & Conflict Resolution at Christopher Newport University; the Institute for Genocide and Mass Atrocity Prevention at Binghamton University; and the Sam and Frances Fried Academy at University of Nebraska at Omaha.

KHC-NEH Lecture (In Person & Online)
Deciding Who Was Worth Saving: American Universities and the Refugee Scholars of the Nazi Era
November 12, 2025 at 12:00pm EST
Register to watch online: https://tinyurl.com/y5fab4bt
Register to attend in person: https://tinyurl.com/2pn52zu8

Despite the triumphalist tale that during the Nazi era the United States rescued Europe’s intellectual elite, including Albert Einstein and Enrico Fermi, Hannah Arendt and Herbert Marcuse, thousands of European scholars sought to immigrate to the United States and couldn’t. American universities refused to hire them and the State Department erected barriers to letting them in, meaning many lost not only their livelihoods, but also their lives. Dr. Laurel Leff, author of Well Worth Saving: American Universities’ Life and Death Decisions on Refugees from Nazi Europe (Yale University Press, 2019), will introduce a few of those scholars and explain how academic institutions in the United States undertook these fraught choices. 

This event is part of the 2025-26 KHC and National Endowment for the Humanities Colloquium, “Resistance, Resilience and Reinvention: Artists and Academics Escaping Nazism.” It is co-sponsored by the Holocaust & Human Rights Education Center in White Plains; the Center for Genocide and Human Rights Research in Africa and the Diaspora at Northeastern Illinois University; the Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights at Rutgers University; the Holocaust, Genocide & Interfaith Education Center at Manhattan University; the Ray Wolpow Institute for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Crimes Against Humanity at Western Washington University; the Reiff Center for Human Rights & Conflict Resolution at Christopher Newport University; the Holocaust Resource & Education Center of Kean University; the Institute for Genocide and Mass Atrocity Prevention at Binghamton University; the Martin-Springer Institute at Northern Arizona University; and the Queens College Center for Jewish Studies.

Unseen Threads Series (In Person & Online)
Memorializing Black History: Heritage, Culture and Community at the Weeksville Heritage Center
November 19, 2025 at 12:00pm EST
Register to watch online: https://tinyurl.com/3jnj3c7b
Register to attend in person: https://tinyurl.com/ycy4dsr3
In Person in QCC’s Oakland Building Dining Hall

The Weeksville Heritage Center is a historic site and cultural center in Central Brooklyn that uses education, arts, and a social justice lens to preserve, document, and inspire engagement with the history of one of the largest free Black communities in pre-Civil War America. Join Dr. Raymond Codrington, Weeksville’s President and CEO, and Irvin Weathersby, Jr., author of In Open Contempt: Confronting White Supremacy in Art and Public Space (Penguin Random House, 2025), for a conversation about memory, historic preservation, as well as the connections of cultural heritage institutions to the local communities in which they are based.

This event is part of Queensborough Community College’s (QCC) Unseen Threads initiative, a partnership between the KHC and QCC’s Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation Campus Center. It is co-sponsored by the Holocaust & Human Rights Education Center in White Plains; the Center for Genocide and Human Rights Research in Africa and the Diaspora at Northeastern Illinois University; the Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights at Rutgers University; the Holocaust, Genocide & Interfaith Education Center at Manhattan University; the Ray Wolpow Institute for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Crimes Against Humanity at Western Washington University; the Reiff Center for Human Rights & Conflict Resolution at Christopher Newport University; and the Institute for Genocide and Mass Atrocity Prevention at Binghamton University.

KHC-NEH Lecture (In Person & Online)
Flight or Fight? Artists in Nazi Germany, 1933-1945
December 3, 2025 at 12:00pm EST
Register to watch online: https://tinyurl.com/395zxa45
Register to attend in person: https://tinyurl.com/2a9azjvm

Between 1933 and 1945, the National Socialist regime controlled artistic work in Germany. Join Rachel Stern, founding director of the Fritz Ascher Society for Persecuted, Ostracized and Banned Art, for a discussion about the system of fear and control installed by the Nazis, its impact on the national cultural landscape, and artists’ strategies of survival.

This event is part of the 2025-26 KHC and National Endowment for the Humanities Colloquium, “Resistance, Resilience and Reinvention: Artists and Academics Escaping Nazism.” It is co-sponsored by the Holocaust & Human Rights Education Center in White Plains; the Center for Genocide and Human Rights Research in Africa and the Diaspora at Northeastern Illinois University; the Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights at Rutgers University; the Holocaust, Genocide & Interfaith Education Center at Manhattan University; the Ray Wolpow Institute for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Crimes Against Humanity at Western Washington University; the Reiff Center for Human Rights & Conflict Resolution at Christopher Newport University; the Institute for Genocide and Mass Atrocity Prevention at Binghamton University; the Cohen Institute for Holocaust & Genocide Studies at Keene State College; and the Martin-Springer Institute at Northern Arizona University.

Spring 2026 Programs

Holocaust Memory/International Holocaust Remembrance Day Commemoration (In Person & Online)
Resisters: How Ordinary Jews Fought Persecution in Hitler’s Germany
Tuesday, January 27, 2026 at 6:00pm EST
Register to watch online: https://tinyurl.com/we54zydp
Register to attend in person: https://tinyurl.com/5c8e9293

Between 1933 and 1945, hundreds of Jews resisted persecution in Nazi Germany and annexed Austria, including public protest and taking pictures to document persecution, despite being often heavily punished by the regime. The fact that so many German Jewish women and men of all ages, educations, and professions resisted obliterates the common view of Jewish passivity under Nazi persecution. In commemoration of the 81st anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland, Dr. Wolf Gruner presents a new and broader definition of resistance including five different kinds of individual acts, and a large set of new sources, ranging from police and court records to survivor testimonies and photographs. Dr. Gruner holds the Shapell-Guerin Chair in Jewish Studies and is Professor of History at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles since 2008. He is the Founding Director of the USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research since 2014.

The event is organized by the Harriet & Kenneth Kupferberg Holocaust Center (KHC) and is underwritten by the Eva Bobrow Memorial Fund. It is co-sponsored by the Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights at Rutgers University; the Reiff Center for Human Rights and Conflict Resolution at Christopher Newport University; the Holocaust & Human Rights Education Center in White Plains; the Ray Wolpow Institute for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Crimes Against Humanity at Western Washington University; the Holocaust, Genocide & Interfaith Education Center at Manhattan University; the Institute for Genocide and Mass Atrocity Prevention at Binghamton University; the Genocide Studies Program at Yale University; the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Salem State University; and the Sam and Frances Fried Holocaust and Genocide Academy at University of Nebraska at Omaha.

Holocaust Memory & Jewish Identity in Latin America and the Caribbean Series (In Person & Online)
A Forgotten Story of Holocaust Refuge in Bolivia
Wednesday, March 4, 2026 at 12:00pm EST
Register to watch online: https://tinyurl.com/4pm2vxmu
Register to attend in person: https://tinyurl.com/mrephh64 

During the critical years of the Jewish refugee crisis, one unlikely country opened its doors: Bolivia. At the time, Bolivia was perceived as a poor and struggling nation, still recovering from the devastating war with Paraguay (1932–1935). Yet, against all expectations, the country welcomed around 20,000 Jewish refugees. Why did Bolivia become a refuge for many when other Latin American countries turned people away? Join anthropologist and historian Dr. Sandra Gruner-Domic as she explores the dynamics of the refugee community in Bolivia, as well as the geopolitical inferences and responses to migration of undesired people in unexpected regions.

The event is organized by the Harriet & Kenneth Kupferberg Holocaust Center (KHC) and is underwritten by the Eva Bobrow Memorial Fund. It is co-sponsored by the Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights at Rutgers University; the Reiff Center for Human Rights and Conflict Resolution at Christopher Newport University; the Holocaust & Human Rights Education Center in White Plains; the Ray Wolpow Institute for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Crimes Against Humanity at Western Washington University; the Holocaust, Genocide & Interfaith Education Center at Manhattan University; the Institute for Genocide and Mass Atrocity Prevention at Binghamton University; the Sam and Frances Fried Holocaust and Genocide Academy at University of Nebraska at Omaha; the Holocaust Education & Resource Center at Kean University; and the Martin-Springer Institute at Northern Arizona University.

KHC-NEH Lecture (In Person & Online)
From Swastika to Jim Crow: The German Jewish Refugee Scholars Hired at HBCUs 
Thursday, March 5, 2026 at 12:00pm EST
Register to watch online: https://tinyurl.com/54zvpkru
Register to attend in person: https://tinyurl.com/2a72yh44 

From Swastika to Jim Crow tells the story of German Jewish scholars who joined the faculty at historically Black colleges and universities in the South and the challenges of leaving one oppressive society for another. In this discussion, documentarians Joel Sucher and Steven Fischler will share their process making the film, from working with local historian Gabrielle Edgecomb to interviewing retired professors such as philosopher Ernst Manasse who taught at North Carolina Central University for almost 40 years, and the students they mentored, including Obama administration advisor and economist Joyce Ladner. 

This event is part of the 2025-26 Harriet & Kenneth Kupferberg Holocaust Center (KHC) and National Endowment for the Humanities Colloquium, “Resistance, Resilience and Reinvention: Artists and Academics Escaping Nazism.” It is co-sponsored by the Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights at Rutgers University; the Reiff Center for Human Rights and Conflict Resolution at Christopher Newport University; the Holocaust & Human Rights Education Center in White Plains; the Ray Wolpow Institute for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Crimes Against Humanity at Western Washington University; the Holocaust, Genocide & Interfaith Education Center at Manhattan University; the Institute for Genocide and Mass Atrocity Prevention at Binghamton University; the Human Rights Institute at Kean University; and the Queens College Center for Jewish Studies.

There are two ways to screen the film event:

Streaming:
Information on how to access the film online will be sent out 48 hours prior to the event

In Person at the KHC:
Wednesday, March 4 at 3:00pm EST
Thursday, March 5 at 2:00pm EST immediately after the filmmakers’ talk

KHC-NEH Professional Development Workshop (Online only)
Pedagogy, Human Rights & Philosophy in the Face of Oppression
Friday, March 13, 2026 at 10:00am EDT
Register to watch online: https://tinyurl.com/mf5rsne2

In this workshop, QCC philosophy professor Dr. Shannon Kincaid will introduce participants to both the idea of discussion-based pedagogy, as rooted in American Pragmatism, and to its implementation in teaching texts that speak to the theme of the 2025-26 KHC-NEH colloquium, Resistance, Resilience and Reinvention: Artists and Academics Escaping Nazism. Key examples will come by way of academics that fled oppression.

This event is part of the 2025-26 Harriet & Kenneth Kupferberg Holocaust Center (KHC) and National Endowment for the Humanities Colloquium, “Resistance, Resilience and Reinvention: Artists and Academics Escaping Nazism.” It is co-sponsored by the Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights at Rutgers University; the Reiff Center for Human Rights and Conflict Resolution at Christopher Newport University; the Holocaust & Human Rights Education Center in White Plains; the Ray Wolpow Institute for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Crimes Against Humanity at Western Washington University; the Holocaust, Genocide & Interfaith Education Center at Manhattan University; and the Institute for Genocide and Mass Atrocity Prevention at Binghamton University.

KHC-NEH Lecture (In Person & Online)
Across Continents and Generations: Poetry as Memory and Witness
Tuesday, March 17, 2026 at 12:00pm EDT
Register to watch online: https://tinyurl.com/2p9u2at6
Register to attend in person: https://tinyurl.com/3dh9hkha

Join us for a poetry reading with acclaimed poets Julia Kolchinsky and Luisa Muradyan, who came to the United States from Ukraine in the 90’s as Jewish refugees and are both descendants of Holocaust survivors. They will share work from their books PARALLAX and I Make Jokes When I’m Devastated, which deal with raising children under the shadow of intergenerational trauma and the war against Ukraine. They will also read from their forthcoming collaborative collection, When The World Stopped Touching, an unfiltered account of mothering young children through quarantine written during the pandemic. 

This event is part of the 2025-26 Harriet & Kenneth Kupferberg Holocaust Center (KHC) and National Endowment for the Humanities Colloquium, “Resistance, Resilience and Reinvention: Artists and Academics Escaping Nazism.” It is co-sponsored by the Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights at Rutgers University; the Reiff Center for Human Rights and Conflict Resolution at Christopher Newport University; the Holocaust & Human Rights Education Center in White Plains; the Ray Wolpow Institute for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Crimes Against Humanity at Western Washington University; the Holocaust, Genocide & Interfaith Education Center at Manhattan University; the Institute for Genocide and Mass Atrocity Prevention at Binghamton University; and the Martin-Springer Institute at Northern Arizona University.

KHC Open House (In Person)
Monday, April 13, 2026 between 12:00pm and 5:00pm EDT
Register to attend in person: https://tinyurl.com/yck9w8m5

Come visit the KHC and tour the Center’s permanent exhibitions about the Holocaust in Europe and The Concentration Camps: Inside the Nazi System of Incarceration and Genocide, as well as our genocide education classroom. Then stay for the KHC’s annual Yom HaShoah Commemoration, Remembering to Remember: What Memorial Monuments Teach Us About the Holocaust (and Ourselves), beginning at 6:00pm EDT.

Holocaust Memory/Yom HaShoah Commemoration (In Person & Online)
Monday, April 13, 2026 at 6:00pm EDT
Remembering to Remember: What Memorial Monuments Teach Us About the Holocaust (and Ourselves)
Register to watch online: https://tinyurl.com/6drb3cmr
Register to attend in person: https://tinyurl.com/36u2nbtb

Since the end of World War II Holocaust memorial monuments have been made in scores of shapes, sizes, forms and with text in many languages, initially for Jewish audiences, and then in more recent decades for a wider public, intended to teach broader lessons or meet political objectives. Given the breadth of these memorials, what roles do and/or should they play in art, history, commemoration, and education? Using the expansive data from the International Holocaust Memorial Monument Database, to which he has been a lead contributor, Dr. Samuel Gruber, President of the International Survey of Jewish Monuments, reveals how these memorials both reflect and shape Jewish and other collective memories over the past 80 years.

The event is organized by the Harriet & Kenneth Kupferberg Holocaust Center (KHC) and is underwritten by the Yehoshua and Edna Aizenberg Holocaust Memorial Fund. It is co-sponsored by the Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights at Rutgers University; the Reiff Center for Human Rights and Conflict Resolution at Christopher Newport University; the Holocaust & Human Rights Education Center in White Plains; the Ray Wolpow Institute for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Crimes Against Humanity at Western Washington University; the Holocaust, Genocide & Interfaith Education Center at Manhattan University; the Sue and Leonard Miller Center for Contemporary Judaic Studies at University of Miami; the George Feldenkreis Program in Judaic Studies at University of Miami; the Institute for Genocide and Mass Atrocity Prevention at Binghamton University; the Sam and Frances Fried Holocaust and Genocide Academy at University of Nebraska at Omaha; the Cohen Institute for Holocaust & Genocide Studies at Keene State College; and the Legacy Foundation at Mount Hebron Cemetery.

Human Rights & the Museum Series (Online only)
Curation as Care
Wednesday, April 22, 2026 at 2:30pm EDT
Register to watch online: https://tinyurl.com/52breuhs

Join Dare Turner (Yurok Tribe), Curator of Indigenous Art at the Brooklyn Museum, for a discussion about the practice of community representation, engagement, and dialogue through the curation of historical and contemporary Native art in encyclopedic museums. Turner will address the concept of “curation as care” as it relates to her recent projects and her role in stewarding the Brooklyn Museum’s Indigenous art collection. She will also speak about the exhibition initiative she co-curated with Leila Grothe at the Baltimore Museum of Art entitled “Preoccupied: Indigenizing the Museum,” the reinstallation of the Brooklyn Museum’s American Art wing, and her collaboration with museum professionals and Indigenous knowledge keepers alike.

This event is part of the Harriet & Kenneth Kupferberg Holocaust Center’s (KHC) Human Rights and the Museum Series, a collaboration between the KHC and the Museum and Gallery Studies Program in the Art and Design Department at Queensborough Community College (QCC). It is co-sponsored by the Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights at Rutgers University; the Reiff Center for Human Rights and Conflict Resolution at Christopher Newport University; the Holocaust & Human Rights Education Center in White Plains; the Ray Wolpow Institute for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Crimes Against Humanity at Western Washington University; the Holocaust, Genocide & Interfaith Education Center at Manhattan University; the Institute for Genocide and Mass Atrocity Prevention at Binghamton University; and the Human Rights Institute at Kean University.

KHC-NEH Lecture (In Person & Online)
Finding Refuge at Bryn Mawr: The Exiled Mathematician Emmy Noether
Thursday, April 23, 2026 at 12:00pm EDT
Register to watch online: https://tinyurl.com/y3nf5ecc
Register to attend in person: https://tinyurl.com/yh3tahmk

On November 7, 1933, Emmy Noether, the most eminent woman mathematician in Europe, arrived in New York after she was dismissed from the University of Göttingen. Dr. Qinna Shen, Associate Professor of German at Bryn Mawr College and author of A Refugee Scholar from Nazi Germany: Emmy Noether and Bryn Mawr College (2019), will reconstruct the story of how Noether found refuge in the U.S. and share ongoing efforts by mathematicians and physicists to honor her.

This event is part of the 2025-26 Harriet & Kenneth Kupferberg Holocaust Center (KHC) and National Endowment for the Humanities Colloquium, “Resistance, Resilience and Reinvention: Artists and Academics Escaping Nazism.” It is co-sponsored by the Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights at Rutgers University; the Reiff Center for Human Rights and Conflict Resolution at Christopher Newport University; the Holocaust & Human Rights Education Center in White Plains; the Ray Wolpow Institute for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Crimes Against Humanity at Western Washington University; the Holocaust, Genocide & Interfaith Education Center at Manhattan University; and the Institute for Genocide and Mass Atrocity Prevention at Binghamton University.

KHC-NEH Lecture (In Person & Online)
Varian Fry: The Audacious American Journalist Who Saved Europe’s Artists from the Nazis 
Tuesday, April 28, 2026 at 12:30pm EDT
Register to watch online: https://tinyurl.com/4b2anz4w
Register to attend in person: https://tinyurl.com/2nju9d9h

August 1940. In New York, the Emergency Rescue Committee forms to save European artists blacklisted by Hitler. But who will go to southern France to find the artists and do the rescuing? Enter Varian Fry, a New York journalist with deep knowledge of the European political situation but zero experience saving high profile would-be emigrés. How did Fry end up in this vital and delicate position? How did he find the artists on his list? Where did the artists hide while they awaited visas, and how did Fry help them negotiate the tangled red tape of wartime immigration? How did Fry’s time in Marseille affect the rest of his life? In this presentation, novelist and professor Julie Orringer will take you on a virtual journey to wartime Marseille and show you how one daring American achieved the impossible: the saving of more than two thousand artists, including Marc Chagall, Max Ernst, André Breton, Hannah Arendt, and many others.

This event is part of the 2025-26 Harriet & Kenneth Kupferberg Holocaust Center (KHC) and National Endowment for the Humanities Colloquium, “Resistance, Resilience and Reinvention: Artists and Academics Escaping Nazism.” It is co-sponsored by Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights at Rutgers University; the Reiff Center for Human Rights and Conflict Resolution at Christopher Newport University; the Holocaust & Human Rights Education Center in White Plains; the Ray Wolpow Institute for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Crimes Against Humanity at Western Washington University; the Holocaust, Genocide & Interfaith Education Center at Manhattan University; the Institute for Genocide and Mass Atrocity Prevention at Binghamton University; the Sam and Frances Fried Holocaust and Genocide Academy at University of Nebraska at Omaha; the Holocaust Education & Resource Center at Kean University; and the Martin-Springer Institute at Northern Arizona University.