Shoah Expert Speaks at Rutgers Commemorating 70th Anniversary of Kristallnacht

NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. – Rutgers University will commemorate the 70th anniversary of Kristallnacht with a lecture, “They Were My Neighbors: Jewish Survivors and Their Rescuers in the Holocaust,” presented by Douglas Greenberg, executive dean of Rutgers’ School of Arts and Sciences (SAS). The program takes place on Thursday, Nov. 20, at 7:30 p.m. at the Busch Campus Center, 605 Bartholomew Road in Piscataway.  

To mark the significance of this event Rutgers President Richard L. McCormick will introduce Greenberg.

This will be Greenberg’s first public presentation since assuming his position at Rutgers in August of this year. Previously, he was professor of history at the University of Southern California (USC); executive director of the Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education and president and chief executive officer of the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation; president and director of the Chicago Historical Society; and vice president of the American Council of Learned Societies.  He is also a former chair of the New Jersey Historical Commission. Greenberg has written extensively on the history of early America and American law, and on technology, scholarship and libraries. A Rutgers alumnus (Class of 1969), he also lectures and writes about the Holocaust, comparative genocide and Jewish identity in the post-Holocaust United States.

“By attending to the memories of survivors and their rescuers, we can illuminate the moral questions that genocide implies for everyone,” Greenberg said.

Jews and gentiles were neighbors in prewar Europe, Greenberg notes, and the Nazis’ criminal viciousness was occasionally countered by the heroism of people who saved their Jewish neighbors from death. “The details of these experiences acquire poignant and profound meaning about the moral underpinnings of heroic acts in times of violence,” Greenberg said.

The presentation will include video of Holocaust survivors describing their experiences. It is free and open to the public. Registration is recommended. Send an e-mail to csjlrsvp@rci.rutgers.edu or call 732-932-2033 to register.

The first in a series of public lectures sponsored by the School of Arts and Sciences, the event is cosponsored by The Allen and Joan Bildner Center for the Study of Jewish Life.