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      • 1. Online Center Database Gives Public Access to Survivor and Scholarly Voices
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      • 4. Center Fall Programming Goes Global during the “Zoom Age”
      • 5. Center Commemorates “Kristallnacht” Amidst Increasing Antisemitism and Attacks on Synagogues
    • A Word From Our Director
    • Forthcoming Center Events
  • Summer 2021
    • Articles >
      • 1. Workshop on German-Jewish Studies in Cooperation with Berlin’s Zentrum für Antisemitismusforschung
      • 2. Center Names Winner of the JHP Student Research Paper Prize
      • 3. Warsaw Ghetto Research by Yad Vashem Director
      • 4. Faculty Research
      • 5. Symposium To be Held as Virtual Program Open to the Public
      • 6. Peace and Genocide Education Club Honored with Student Leadership Award
    • Forthcoming Events
    • A Word From the Director
  • Winter 2021
    • Articles >
      • 1. Dr. Rosemary Horowitz z’’l: In Memoriam
      • 2. Research by the Center Affiliated Faculty and Students in Fall 2021
      • 3. Renowned VT-Based Theater Company Bread & Puppet
      • 4. Virtual International Programming from Australia to Poland and Florida Continues
    • Forthcoming Events
  • Home
  • About
  • Summer 2020
    • A Word From Our Director
    • Forthcoming Center Events
    • Articles >
      • 1. Prominent Polish-Jewish Intellectual Named First Center Fellow
      • 2. Yom HaShoah Commemorations
      • 3. Center and Partners Organized Program Against Police Brutality in NC
      • 4. Research by the Center Affiliated Faculty
      • 5. Expanded Cooperation with AppTV
      • 6. Training the Next Generation of Holocaust Scholars and Educators in Washington, DC
      • 7. Center Participates in German Initiative to Fight Antisemitism and Strengthen Democracy
  • Winter 2020
    • Articles >
      • 1. Online Center Database Gives Public Access to Survivor and Scholarly Voices
      • 2. Rethinking the Summer Symposium in Times of a Pandemic
      • 3. Research by the Center Affiliated Faculty
      • 4. Center Fall Programming Goes Global during the “Zoom Age”
      • 5. Center Commemorates “Kristallnacht” Amidst Increasing Antisemitism and Attacks on Synagogues
    • A Word From Our Director
    • Forthcoming Center Events
  • Summer 2021
    • Articles >
      • 1. Workshop on German-Jewish Studies in Cooperation with Berlin’s Zentrum für Antisemitismusforschung
      • 2. Center Names Winner of the JHP Student Research Paper Prize
      • 3. Warsaw Ghetto Research by Yad Vashem Director
      • 4. Faculty Research
      • 5. Symposium To be Held as Virtual Program Open to the Public
      • 6. Peace and Genocide Education Club Honored with Student Leadership Award
    • Forthcoming Events
    • A Word From the Director
  • Winter 2021
    • Articles >
      • 1. Dr. Rosemary Horowitz z’’l: In Memoriam
      • 2. Research by the Center Affiliated Faculty and Students in Fall 2021
      • 3. Renowned VT-Based Theater Company Bread & Puppet
      • 4. Virtual International Programming from Australia to Poland and Florida Continues
    • Forthcoming Events
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Center Fall Programming Goes Global during the “Zoom Age”

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Prof. Atina Grossmann lecturing from her home office in New York City
The deadly attack on the synagogue of the Tree of Life – Or L’Simcha Congregation in Pittsburgh in 2018, which sent shockwaves through American-Jewish communities, has been far from the only act of violence directed against synagogues in the U.S. in recent years. Others like the shooting attack on the Chabad of Poway synagogue on Passover in 2019 were also deadly, while still others such as the attempted bomb attack on the Temple Emanuel Synagogue in Pueblo, Colorado, failed, but not by far. These ongoing assaults are not limited to synagogues in the U.S. There have been a series of attacks on synagogues in Germany, for example. The most recent one in October severely injured a kippa-wearing Jewish student about to participate in Sukkot services in Hamburg’s Hohe Weide synagogue. In Ukraine this past July, an axe-wielding attacker tried to enter the synagogue at Mariupol on the eve of Tisha B’Av, but was stopped by security. And the list continues…

Faced with these crimes, the Center organized a commemoration of the 82nd anniversary of Kristallnacht, the nationwide pogroms in Hitler Germany that began on November 9, 1938, and marked the prewar turning point in the Nazi regime’s persecution of the Jewish population. As part of the pogroms, mainly SS and SA units destroyed close to 300 synagogues throughout the Reich. The Center-hosted program was designed to raise awareness not just of one of the many mass and genocidal crimes of the Nazi regime, but also the ongoing discrimination and violence perpetrated against Jews in Europe, North America and far beyond.

Dr. Willie C. Fleming, Appalachian State’s chief diversity officer, welcomed the participants on behalf of the administration. Kurt Love, President of the Executive Committee of the local synagogue, thanked the audience for participating and shared memories of family members persecuted and murdered by the Germans. Center Director Thomas Pegelow Kaplan introduced the guest of honor, Dr. Atina Grossmann, Professor of History in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Cooper Union in New York City, herself the daughter of Holocaust survivors. Sharing the Center’s firm belief in the importance of education to counter racism and antisemitism, Prof. Grossmann gave an illuminating presentation on “Remapping Survival: Jewish Refugees and Lost Memories of Displacement, Trauma, and Rescue in the Soviet Union, Iran, and India” that demonstrated the, literally, global scope of the Shoah. Increasingly desperate German, Polish and other European Jews tried to escape the Nazi-controlled continent, exploring ever more remote routes and temporary exiles, ranging from the relative safety of Iran to imprisonment -- as German or Austrian Jews -- in British India due to their enemy alien status. The connections to the current refugee crises, closed borders and mass detentions was not lost on the audience. The Center will continue this programming, also as part of its efforts to give our students tools to make the right ethical decisions in the face of today’s many forms of bigotry and injustice.  
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Kurt Love (Temple of the High Country) during the commemoration
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