Schedule of Events for Night of Broken Glass

SCHEDULE OF EVENTS FOR “NIGHT OF BROKEN GLASS:

REMEMBERING THE HOLOCAUST”

November 9-14, 2015

Sponsored by:

Indiana State University Office of the President, Center for Community Engagement, College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Art and Design, School of Music, Departmentof Theater, Department of History, Department of English, Department of Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics, Department of Multidisciplinary Studies, Cunningham Memorial Library, Bayh College of Education

CANDLES Holocaust Museum and Education Center

United Hebrew Congregation

Vigo County Public Library

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 9

Keynote Address: “The Lesson ofKristallnacht: The Importance of Speaking up for All Groups Targeted with Bias, Hate and Violence” by Steve Wessler, human rights educator, trainer, and advocate

Monday, November 9 at 5:00 p.m. in the Bayh School of Ed University Hall Theatre, Indiana State University

Steve Wessler works in the United States and Europe through conflict resolution, training, and advocacy to provide communities with skills and strategies to protect targeted groups from the devastating impact of bias-motivated violence.

Two Presentations: “My Memories of Kristallnacht” by Walter Sommers, Holocaust survivor and docent at CANDLES Holocaust Museum and Education Center; and "Czech Survivor # 32379" by Scott Skillman of the United Hebrew Congregation, about the extraordinary history of a special torah.

Monday, November 9 at 7:00 p.m. at the United Hebrew Congregation, 540 S. 6th Street, Terre Haute

On November 9, 1938, 17-year-old Walter Sommers pedaled his bicycle home from the import-export office where he was an apprentice, surveying the broken shop windows and trying to understand what was happening.A few blocks down the street, Sommers passed the synagogue where he attended services. It was engulfed in flames. Firefighters stood by and Nazi storm-troopers supervised the people in the street to make sure they didn’t try to put out the blaze. On the 77th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the “Night of Broken Glass,” Walter Sommers will share his memories from that day and talk about his family’s choice to emigrate to the United States.

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“From a town of 543 Jews in 1938, I am one of only sixteen survivors. All sixteen, like me, are torahs stolen from our home by Nazis and their supporters. We were given numbers, written on our bodies, and placed in a warehouse where we sat neglected for 22 years. I was liberated in 1964 by an English group who bought us from the communist government. All of the people in my town were transported to Terezin concentration camp in 1942, and none survived to return to use me. My 15 brothers and I are all that are left to tell the story of the Jews in Pardubice, Czech Republic. My story is long and my people were once numerous. The story of how I was saved when so many others were burned or trashed is remarkable and speaks to human nature itself, both the good and the not so good. Through it all, my words and the message they represent endure and continue to teach lessons.”

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 10

Lecture: “Kristallnacht as Turning Point: Jewish Lives and Nazi Policy” by Christopher Fischer, ISU Associate Professor of History

Tuesday, November 10 at 3:30 p.m. in Cunningham Library events room

Kristallnacht marked not just a night of violence, arson, and terror for Germany’s Jews, but a major watershed in both their lives and the policies of the Nazi regime. The regime used the opportunity to tighten the economic stranglehold on Jews and accelerate the pace of Jewish emigration; for Germany’s remaining Jews, Kristallnacht’s trauma served to hasten the drive to leave the country. Dr. Fischer’s talk will thus put the pogrom in its broader context and sketch out how it set the stage for what was to follow.

Event: Coming to See Aunt Sophie, a staged reading of the play written by Arthur Feinsod, ISU Professor of Theater, and directed by Dale McFadden, IU Professor of Acting and Directing

Tuesday, November 10 at 5:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. in the Landini Center for Performing and Fine Arts Recital Hall, Indiana State University

The play is based on the true story of Jan Karski, a humble Polish-Catholic courier for the Underground during World War II, who risked his life many times to alert world leaders about the Nazi persecution of the Polish Jews. With the secret code phrase “Coming to see Aunt Sophie,” Karski worked his way through Nazi-occupied Europe, finally ending up in the United States and giving his report in July 1943 to FDR himself. It is a remarkable story about a man who was a hero to everyone but himself and whose experiences of trying to alert the world and failing to prevent the Holocaust haunted him the rest of his life. This play has been performed in Germany, Poland, Australia, as well as in three American cities and has been translated into Polish and Hungarian.

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 11

Lecture: “A Talk on Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time” (Performance will be held on Friday at 7:30 p.m. in Landini Center for Performing and Fine Arts Recital Hall) by Terry Dean, ISU Assistant Professor of Musicology and Gender Studies

Wednesday, November 11 at 11:00 a.m. in the Landini Center for Performing and Fine Arts Recital Hall, Indiana State University

Olivier Messiaen'sQuatuor Pour la Fin du Temps (“Quartet For the End of Time”) for cello, piano, clarinet, and violin was composed in a POW camp in Nazi-controlled Silesia. The composer recalled its premiere in early 1941 this way: “The Stalag was buried in snow. We were 30,000 prisoners (French for the most part, with a few Poles and Belgians). The four musicians played on broken instruments … the keys on my upright piano remained lowered when depressed … it’s on this piano, with my three fellow musicians, dressed in the oddest way … completely tattered, and wooden clogs large enough for the blood to circulate despite the snow underfoot … that I played my quartet.” This recollection has been challenged, even by members of the quartet itself: while Messiaen remembers thousands in the audience, the camp hall could hold at most 500; his piano was not as imperfect as he describes; and his insistence that the cellist only perform with three strings has been repeatedly denied by the cellist himself. Nonetheless, few dispute the significance of the work itself, one of the most important to be produced in the 20th century.

Lecture:“Arno Breker: The Afterlife of Fascist Aesthetics” by Brett Ashley Kaplan, Professor and Conrad Humanities Scholar in the Department of Comparative and World Literature at the University of Illinois

Wednesday, November 11 at 12 noon-1:00 p.m. in the Whitaker Room at ISU’s Bayh College of Education. Reception will follow.

Brett Ashley Kaplan is the director of the Program in Jewish Culture and Society and holds affiliation with the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory. Professor Kaplan is the author of Jewish Anxiety and the Novels of Philip Roth (Bloomsbury Press, 2015); Landscapes of Holocaust Postmemory (Routledge 2010); Unwanted Beauty: Aesthetic Pleasure in Holocaust Representation (Univ. of Illinois Press, 2006).Arno Breker (1900- 1991), German sculptor, gained notoriety as “Hitler’s favorite sculptor.” His public sculptures were prized during the Third Reich as representations of Nazi eugenic ideology. A reexamination of his work has been ongoing since a 2006 exhibit in Germany.

Lecture: “Genocide: New Questions, Fresh Perspectives” a two-part lecture by Isaac Land, ISU Associate Professor of History, and Brendan Corcoran, ISU Associate Professor of English

Wednesday, November 11 at 3:30-5:00 p.m. in Cunningham Library events room, Indiana State University

Dr. Land’s talk, “What is the opposite of genocide?”considers genocide from an unfamiliar angle: What can we learn from communities where diverse groups seem to coexist for centuries without many problems? What qualities do they cultivate that make this possible? Is there such a thing as a genocide-proof society? Dr. Land will draw on theories about this subject, including cosmopolitanism, super-diversity, and Saskia Sassen’s “global city.” He will also discuss specific examples and anecdotes of tolerant port towns around the world, as well as many “formerly tolerant port towns” where coexistence ended in violence.

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Though coined as term during the Holocaust, genocide has become one of the defining features of our modern world. In “Remembering to Remember—The Holocaust and a Century of Genocides” Dr. Corcoran will begin with the Holocaust and move backward and forward in time from this signature horror of the 20th century to look at how genocide is a governing fact of our moral and political lives. Rwanda becomes the object lesson for lessons never learned—or lessons refused to have been learned. When students are presented with the history of the Rwandan genocide in combination with a rough sketch of the media’s and political leaders’ responses to it in real time and shortly thereafter, they are dumbstruck with horror. They are moved deeply and in many ways galvanized even as they bemoan a certain loss of their own innocence, since too many students learn about the Holocaust and then figure that this genocide was more or less an isolated historical event. The fact that the Holocaust exists alongside other genocides raises the uncomfortable question of how these horrors shape us—our expectations for the present and future in the context of our understanding of the past. This talk will introduce the question of what it means to really remember to remember. Framing texts will include: Wilfred Owen’s World War I poem “Insensibility,” passages from Primo Levi’s Survival in Auschwitz, Michael Longley’s poems remembering the Holocaust, recollections of my own experiences in the Peace Corps living in Guatemala five years after its genocide was officially over, passages from Philip Gourevitch’s book on Rwanda, We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will be Killed with our Families, as well as parts of Samantha Powers’ A Problem from Hell.

Event: Letters from Camp, a staged reading of family correspondences of Laura Bates, ISU Professor of English, and directed by Arthur Feinsod, ISU Professor of Theater

Wednesday November 11 at 5:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. in the Landini Center for Performing and Fine Arts Recital Hall, Indiana State University

Fifty million people became refugees during World War Two, having fled their homelands seeking safety from Nazi and Soviet atrocities. English Department Professor Laura Bates’ mother spent five years in refugee camps, searching for relatives, finding none, and facing post-war hardships alone. This play is based on the letters and journal writings from those years. It offers a glimpse into the kind of trauma that is being endured by more than fifty million refugees around the world today.

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 12

Event:“Children’s Art from the Terezin Concentration Camp” exhibit opening and reception, organized and curated by Brad Venable, ISU Associate Professor, Department of Art and Design

Thursday, November 12 from 4:30-5:45 p.m. in the Turman Gallery of the Fine Arts Department, Indiana State University

Only 69 kilometers from Prague, the fortress of Theresienstadt (Terezin) became a Jewish concentration camp after German forces expanded into Czechoslovakia during the late 1930s. Under the pretext of protecting the Jews from the horrors of war, Hitler sent thousands to be housed there, where the population swelled to over 55,000. Many were notable artists, writers, and musicians, who like the other inhabitants, eventually were transported to Auschwitz and killed. Over 97,000 Jews from Terezin died. Among them were 15,000 children, many of whom created art with the guidance of Friedl Dicker-Brandeis, a former student of the Bauhaus School. This exhibit of 40 drawings from over 5,000 that were snuck out of the camp offers a unique look at the tragic experience of these talented Jewish children. Along with this extraordinary exhibit, current students from North High School, West Terre Haute Middle School, and the Community School of the Arts will display their own works of art that were created in response to the Holocaust.

Lecture: “Friedl Dicker-Brandeis and the Children’s Art of Theresienstadt: What the Pictures Reveal” by Associate Professor and Coordinator of the Art Education Program Susan K. Leshnoff, Ed.D., Department of Art, Music and Design, Seton Hall University, New Jersey

Thursday, November 12 at 6:00 p.m. in the Landini Center for Performing and Fine Arts Recital Hall, Indiana State University

Friedl Dicker-Brandeis, a Bauhaus-trained artist and teacher who was transported to Theresienstadt (Terezin) in1942, committed herself to teaching art to the children in this Nazi ghetto camp until her murder two years later at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Dicker- Brandeis provides a powerful legacy of a heroic art educator working under the most heinous conditions to provide the children with an avenue for serenity through artistic self- expression. Dr. Leshnoff’s slide presentation will focus on what the almost 6,000 drawings and paintings surviving the war reveal about the children’s experiences and the positive impact Dicker-Brandeis’ unique methods of teaching had on them.

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 13

Lecture: “Seen for Syria” by Soulaf Abas, ISU Lecturer in the Department of Art and Design

Friday, November 13 from 5:00-6:00 p.m. in the Cunningham Library events room, Indiana State University

“Seen for Syria” is an art therapy and education initiative for the Syrian refugee children in Jordan. The project started in August 2013 when Ms. Abas was able to go to the refugee camps and work with the children for two-and-a-half months during the summer of 2014. During her stay, she worked with hundreds of children in Zaatari Camp as well as makeshift camps and host communities for Syrian refugee families in Amman. She worked on a daily basis with 75 children, planting gardens in the shape of the Syrian map (“Blooming Syria”); painting murals; and doing numerous art projects for groups and individuals to help the children channel the trauma they had been enduring through painting and drawing.

Concert: “Quartet for the End of Time” by Olivier Messiaen and “I Never Saw Another Butterfly” by Director of ISU School for Music Paul Bro. Performed as part of the ISU School of Music’s Faculty Chamber Music concert

Friday, November 13 at 7:30 p.m. in the Landini Center for Performing and Fine Arts Recital Hall, Indiana State University

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 14

Presentation: “Surviving the Angel of Death” by Eva Mozes Kor, Holocaust survivor, founding director of CANDLES Holocaust Museum and Education Center

Saturday, November 14 at 1:00 p.m. at CANDLES Holocaust Museum and Education Center, 1532 South Third Street, Terre Haute

Eva Mozes Kor is a survivor of the Holocaust and a forgiveness advocate. When she was 10 years old, she and her family were loaded onto a crowded cattle car and transported to Auschwitz death camp. Eva and her twin sister, Miriam, became part of a group of children used as human guinea pigs in genetic experiments under the direction of Dr. Josef Mengele. Approximately 1,500 sets of twins—3,000 children—were abused, and most died as a result of these experiments. Eva herself became deathly ill, but through sheer determination, she stayed alive and helped her sister survive. In 1995 Eva founded CANDLES Holocaust Museum and Education Center in Terre Haute. For 20 years the museum has been educating visitors about the Holocaust and other mass atrocities, and working to build a community of critical thinkers who will illuminate the worldwith hope, healing, respect, and responsibility.

Film and Discussion:Ghosts of Rwanda, with discussion by Brendan Corcoran, ISU AssociateProfessor of English

Saturday, November 14 at4:00-6:30 p.m. at CANDLES Holocaust Museum and Education Center, 1532 South Third Street, Terre Haute

Ghosts of Rwanda, a special two-hour documentary to mark the 10th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide, examines the social, political, and diplomatic failures that converged to enable the genocide to occur. Through interviews with key government officials, diplomats, soldiers, and survivors of the slaughter, Ghosts of Rwanda presents groundbreaking, first-hand accounts of the genocide from those who lived it: the diplomats on the scene who thought they were building peace only to see their colleagues murdered; the Tutsi survivors who recount the horror of seeing their friends and family slaughtered by Hutu friends and co-workers; and the U.N. peacekeepers in Rwanda who were ordered not to intervene in the massacre happening all around them.

An open discussion with Professor Brendan Corcoran will follow the film.

7/15/15