Indiana University of Pennsylvania's Holocaust Remembrance Committee, chaired by Shannon Phillips-Shyrock, will present a program including four Holocaust survivors and three nationally known Holocaust scholars for the April 8 Six O'Clock Series program at IUP's Hadley Union Building Ohio Room from 6:00 to 7:30 p.m.
Panel participants include:
Judah Samet, of Pittsburgh, who survived a 10-month imprisonment in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp with his family. He also is a survivor of the Pittsburgh Tree of Life synagogue shooting in October.
Holocaust survivor Moshe Baran of Pittsburgh. During World War II he escaped from a forced labor camp and joined the Russian resistance, and was able to save most of his family. After serving in the Russian army for a year, he was in a displaced persons camp in Austria; he and his late wife, Malka, came to the United States in 1950.
Shulamit Bastacky, born in the Vilna Ghetto operated by Nazi Germany, who was hidden by a Catholic nun from age one to three and then placed in an orphanage. She was reunited with her parents, immigrated to Israel, and came to the United States in 1963.
Michal Freidman, a Jewish history professor at Carnegie Mellon University and granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, will discuss her grandmother's survival during the Holocaust.
Peter Black, chief historian for the US Department of Justice for litigation against Nazis living in the United States; senior historian, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum; and historian consultant, will discuss other victims of the Nazis during the Holocaust.
Martin Dean, historical consultant to the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center in Kyiv; former senior historian, Metropolitan Police war Crimes Investigation, New Scotland Yard, will discuss how ordinary citizens, police, and military became bystanders and murderers during the Holocaust.
The survivors also will speak at local schools during the day.
IUP President Michael Driscoll; Waleed Farag, leader of the local mosque; and Joe Schwartz, leader of the local synagogue, will offer introductory remarks during the evening event.
In addition to the presentations, the committee has organized a collection project for children experiencing homelessness in the area, coordinated through the Armstrong-Indiana Intermediate Unit and the Pennsylvania's Education for Children and Youth Experiencing Homelessness Program.
Hygiene projects, school supplies, socks and underwear, and gift cards are welcome and can be brought to the April 8 event or dropped off at the collection box in Uhler Hall lobby through May 1.
During the day, an antisemitism teacher training event, “Contemporary Antisemitism,” will be presented from 10:00 a.m. to noon at Indiana High School; it is a program of the American Defamation League, USC Shoah Foundation, and Yad Vashem.
Members of the Holocaust Remembrance Committee, in addition to chair Phillips-Shyrock and Black, include: Tim Crain, director, National Catholic Center for Holocaust Education at Seton Hill; Pearl Berman, IUP psychology chair and faculty member; Harrison Wick, IUP Special Collections librarian and university archivist; Joe Shyrock, IUP senior systems analyst; and Harry Schneider, Holocaust survivor and president, Pittsburgh Holocaust Survivor Speakers Bureau.
For more information about the presentation or about IUP's Holocaust Remembrance Committee, contact Phillips-Shyrock at s.shyrock@iup.edu.