Resistance, Resilience and Reinvention: Artists & Academics Escaping Nazism

The KHC has served as a national demonstration site for the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) since 2011. This recognition showcases the KHC as a cultural center that provides programs and offerings which positively impact QCC’s humanities curriculum and shares that information on a national level. For more information, click here.

2025-26 Colloquium

In 1933, as Hitler consolidated power, thousands of Jewish and dissident German artists and academics faced persecution, not only from Nazi antisemitism, but also from the regime’s totalitarian control over culture and society (known as Gleichschaltung). As Nazism spread, many painters, writers, filmmakers, and scholars sought refuge in Europe and the U.S., though restrictive and antisemitic immigration policies often blocked their escape. This series explores the history, contributions, and lasting impact of those who escaped, with help from various support networks, through lectures, poetry readings, and faculty development events each semester. Additionally, the series highlights the resistance and creative works that emerged from their survival. Before each event, we will have a moment of silence in remembrance of those who did not escape the Nazi religious, intellectual and artistic persecution. 

Spring 2026 Programs

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 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 prior to this 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:
Thursday, March 5 at 1:00pm 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 Dr. Shannon Kincaid, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Queensborough Community College, 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 this year’s KHC-NEH colloquium on “Resistance, Resilience and Reinvention: Artists and Academics Escaping Nazism.” Key examples will come from rhetorical and hermeneutical strategies of cross-disciplinary texts of Hanna Arendt. 

This event 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 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-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 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 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.

Fall 2025 Recordings

KHC-NEH Professional Development Workshop
An Introduction to Discussion-Based Pedagogy of Transformative Texts
Recorded on October 17, 2025
Click here to watch the recorded event

In this interactive zoom workshop, Queensborough Community College English department members Ilse Schrynemakers and Susan Lago introduce participating colleagues to the discussion-based pedagogy of the Great Questions Foundation, founded by faculty at Austin Community College. Both Dr. Schrynemakers and Professor Lago are in their second year of a Faculty Fellowship with the Great Question Foundation. They share the philosophy and student engagement strategies to help stimulate and facilitate meaningful class discussions for faculty who are teaching about the texts, academics, and artists featured in the 2025-26 KHC-NEH colloquium and/or are interested in learning about the Great Questions Foundation approach.

KHC-NEH Lecture
Poetry of Witness and Resistance: A Conversation with Ilya Kaminsky
Recorded on October 21, 2025
Click here to watch the recorded event

Join us for a conversation with acclaimed poet Ilya Kaminsky, whose poems bear witness to our times and create a space for empathy and compassion in resistance to oppression. Kaminsky is the author of Deaf Republic (Graywolf Press, 2019) and Dancing In Odessa (Tupelo Press, 2004), and co-editor and co-translator of many other books. His work was a finalist for the National Book Award and won the Los Angeles Times Book Award, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, the National Jewish Book Award, the Whiting Award, the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Metcalf Award, and Poetry magazine’s Levinson Prize, and was also shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award, Neustadt International Literature Prize, and T.S. Eliot Prize (UK).

This event 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 Cohen Institute for Holocaust & Genocide Studies at Keene State College.

KHC-NEH Lecture
Albert Einstein: Refugee, Activist and Humanitarian
Recorded on October 28, 2025
Click here to watch the recorded event

In 1933, with almost twenty years of service as professor at the Prussian Academy of Sciences and researcher at Humbolt University of Berlin, and under targeted threat from the Nazi regime, Albert Einstein fled Germany. With the aid of the Academic Assistance Council, he and his family took refuge first in Belgium, then England, before his appointment at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ. In this presentation, Michael Shara, the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) professor and curator of the 2002 landmark AMNH exhibit, “Einstein,” discusses Einstein’s experiences as a refugee and his political and humanitarian activism. 

This event 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; Wagner College Holocaust Center; and the Queens College Center for Jewish Studies.

KHC-NEH Lecture
Deciding Who Was Worth Saving: American Universities and the Refugee Scholars of the Nazi Era
Recorded on November 12, 2025
Click here to watch the recorded event

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 barrier 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), introduces a few of those scholars and explain how academic institutions in the United States undertook these fraught choices. 

This event 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.

KHC-NEH Lecture
Flight or Fight? Artists in Nazi Germany, 1933-1945
Recorded on December 3, 2025 
Click here to watch the recorded event

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 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.

2025-26 Faculty Fellows

This year’s Queensborough Community College KHC-NEH faculty fellows are Alison Cimino, Lecturer, Department of English, M.F.A.; Dr. Beth Counihan, Professor, Department of English; and Dr. Mark Zelcer, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Department of Social Sciences .