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WKU Hosting Regional Holocaust Exhibit, Special Programs
Bowling Green, Ky. - Western Kentucky University will host “Living On: Portraits of Tennessee Survivors and Liberator,” an exhibition of photographs and stories of regional Holocaust survivors from Feb. 6 to March 28.
“Living On” consists of 64 photographs and texts that document the lives and stories of Tennesseans who survived the Holocaust or who, as soldiers, liberated Jews held in concentration camps at the end of World War II. In conjunction with the exhibition, WKU will host several special programs including lectures, a film, a workshop for teachers and a theater performance for children. The works in the exhibition were created by Robert Heller, an associate professor in the College of Communication and Information at the University of Tennessee, and writer Dawn Weiss Smith. Heller and Smith traveled the state of Tennessee, interviewing and photographing people from Memphis, Nashville, Knoxville and Chattanooga. Heller will visit WKU on Feb. 15. “Living On” was conceived, organized and funded by the Tennessee Holocaust Commission. The guest curator is Susan Knowles, an independent scholar, art critic and curator living in Pikeville, Tenn. Knowles will participate in the exhibit’s opening at 5 p.m. Feb. 6 at WKU’s Ivan Wilson Fine Arts Center Gallery. According to Kristina Arnold, gallery director for the WKU Art Department, “In ‘Living On,’ the intense visual strength of the portraits, the exhibition’s success with visual storytelling, the moving photographs and the personal histories allow us as viewers to develop a unique understanding of the tragedy that was the Holocaust.” The narratives tell of sacrifice, heroism and, at times, small kindnesses that meant the difference between life and death. Ethel Berger of Chattanooga speaks of the murder of her parents and son, and of having her best friend shut the door in her face while she and her family were on the run from the Nazis. Memphis resident Sam Weinreich survived concentration camps both at Auschwitz and Dachau by singing for Nazi doctors to earn an extra piece of bread. “I would sing a particular song,” he remembers, “that would always make this one Nazi cry.” Liberator Harry Snodgrass, from Johnson City, Tenn., now living in Nashville, still remembers with horror his experience upon entering the Buchenwald Concentration Camp. Today he speaks to schools and gatherings about what he saw as a liberator. He stresses the danger of racial and religious divisiveness: “I tell them what I have known all my life…for evil to exist it just takes good people to do nothing.” The exhibition is a cooperative project of WKU, Department of Philosophy and Religion and the Tennessee Holocaust Commission. The exhibition and special programs are made possible by the Provost’s Initiatives for Excellence and the Benjamin Fund of the Hardin County Community Foundation. The programs held in conjunction with the exhibition include the following (all are free and open to the public): Feb. 6: Art Gallery and Exhibition Opening Reception. 5-7 p.m. at Ivan Wilson Fine Arts Center Gallery. “Curator’s Perspective” by Susan Knowles, guest curator of “Living On.” Hosted by WKU Art Department. Feb. 9: Hatcher Modern Lecture Series. 7 p.m. at Ivan Wilson Fine Arts Center Recital Hall. “You Don’t Have to Be Jewish to Be Jewish: Multiculturalism and the ‘New’ Jews in Germany Today” by Sander Gilman, Distinguished Professor of the Graduate Institute of Liberal Arts, Emory University. Hosted by Modern Languages Department. A cultural and literary historian, Gilman is the author or editor of more than 70 books including the standard study on “Jewish Self-Hatred,” the title of his Johns Hopkins University Press monograph of 1986. In 2000-2001 Gilman was a Berlin prize fellow at the American Academy in Berlin. Feb. 15: “Artist’s Perspective: Creating a Portrait of Survival” by Robert Heller, associate professor at University of Tennessee. 8 p.m. at Mass Media and Technology Hall Auditorium. Hosted by the School of Journalism and Broadcasting. Feb. 22: “Living On: Tennesseans Remembering the Holocaust” by documentary filmmaker Will Pedigo of Nashville Public Television. 6 p.m. at Mass Media and Technology Hall Auditorium. Hosted by the School of Journalism and Broadcasting. Feb. 28: Kentucky Institute for the Study of Religion Teacher Workshop on Holocaust Education. 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Knicely Conference Center (WKU South Campus), room 151. Featuring guest curator Susan Knowles; Paul Fleming, principal of Meigs Magnet School in Nashville; Sue Chaney Gilmore, AP European History and Comparative Literature teacher at Martin Luther King Jr. Magnet School in Nashville; Jan Hatleburg, art teacher at Meigs Magnet School; and survivor Eva Rosenfeld of Nashville. WKU’s Department of Philosophy and Religion, the Tennessee Holocaust Commission and the Capitol Arts Alliance are bringing a group of educators who have specialized in Holocaust Education to Bowling Green for a free workshop for area educators of grades 6-12. Teachers also will also have the opportunity to meet survivor Eva Rosenfeld whose family fled Germany for Italy in 1936 only to be confronted with Nazi occupation that threatened her family’s existence once again. Her father escaped on a fishing boat to France in search of a safe place to relocate his family. When he left Eva behind, he made Eva an orphan and a survivor. To register for the workshop, contact Kim Wagner at (270) 782-2787 by Feb. 21. March 2: “Three Phases of the Holocaust” by WKU history professor Jack Thacker. 7 p.m. at Helm Library, room 100. Hosted by WKU Libraries. Thacker specializes in European Social, Intellectual and Military History with an emphasis on World War II. March 7: “Joseph Gavi, Kentucky Holocaust Survivor and Leader of the Minsk Ghetto Uprising” by WKU history professor emeritus Carlton Jackson. 7 p.m. at Helm Library, room 100. Hosted by WKU Libraries. Jackson wrote the biography of Gavi, a Jewish immigrant who lived in Louisville until his death in 2002. Gavi was a young Jewish boy in Minsk, Byelorussia during the German invasion of World War II and endured unspeakable horrors as he struggled to survive and overcome his brutal oppression through covert action, rescuing more than 200 people in the process. March 13: “Anti-Semitism as Speech Act: Conceptualizing the Continuity of Hatred” by Helmut Walser Smith, Martha Rivers Ingram Professor of History and Director of the Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities at Vanderbilt University. 7 p.m. at Ivan Wilson Fine Arts Center Recital Hall. Hosted by WKU Department of Philosophy and Religion. Smith has authored numerous books and articles on German history focusing on relations between religious and ethnic groups. “German Nationalism and Religious Conflict, 1870-1914” examined how the conflict between Protestants and Catholics shaped the way Germans imagined themselves as a national community. “The Butcher's Tale: Murder and Anti-Semitism in a German Town” is a study of anti-Semitic violence told as a murder mystery. March 21: A community lecture at 7:30 p.m. hosted by Barnes and Noble, 1680 Campbell Lane. March 27-28: “My Heart in a Suitcase,” a Capitol Arts Alliance School Day Performances for fourth- to eighth-graders. 9 a.m. and noon at Capitol Arts Center in Bowling Green. This play is a compelling dramatic adaptation of Anne Lehmann Fox’s courageous autobiographical account of her experiences as a 12-year old on the Kindertransport out of Germany. Beginning in December 1938, Anne and 10,000 other Jewish children fled Germany, without their parents, on the Kindertransport, afraid and uncertain of what the future would hold for them and the families they were forced to leave behind. - WKU - a leading American university with international reach - For information, contact Shannon E. Schaffer at (270) 745-5746.
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