Powell-Heller Conference for Holocaust Education
“Africa and the Holocaust”
Schedule
Free and Open to the Public - Registration Required
All Times Posted are Pacific Standard (PST)
7:00 p.m. – Opening Keynote Address: “Sub-Saharan Africans and the Holocaust”, AUC Regency Room
Dr. Edward Kissi, Associate Professor, Department of Africana Studies, School of Interdisciplinary Global Studies, University of South Florida
Convener: Dr. Robert P. Ericksen, Kurt Mayer Chair of Holocaust Studies (Emeritus), PLU
8:00 p.m. – AUC Gray Area
Please join us for a dessert reception following the keynote.
9:30 a.m. – AUC Gray Area
Registration & Coffee
10:00 - 11:45 a.m. – The Genocidal Gaze, AUC Regency Room
Elizabeth Baer, “German Genocide in Africa and the Third Reich: Imperialism, Race, and Sexual Violence”
Dr. Elizabeth Baer is the Research Professor of English and African Studies at Gustavus Adolphus College.
Adam Blackler, “For Land and Life”: Outposts of the German Empire after World War One
Dr. Adam Blackler is Associate Professor of History at University of Wyoming
Convener: Dr. Heather Mathews, Chair, Associate Professor of Art & Design, Gender, Sexuality, and Race Studies, Holocaust and Genocide Studies
11:45 - 12:00 p.m. – Break
12:00 p.m. - 1:30 p.m. – Lunch, AUC Chris Knutzen
Presentations by Mayer Summer Research Fellows
Austin Karr, “Slovakia and the Inability to Confront the Past: Slovakia’s Turbulent Relationship with the First Slovak Republic and the Holocaust”
Anna Marko, “The Application of the “Bloodlands Theory” to the Great Lakes Region of Africa and the Tutsi Diaspora”
Convener: Dr. Rona Kaufman, Professor of English, Director of First Year Experience Program, Director of the Writing Center, PLU
1:45 - 3:30 p.m. – Vichy and Colonial North Africa, AUC Regency Room
Terrence Peterson, “Vichy and the Jews of Tunisia at the Crossroads of Colonialism and the Shoah”
Dr. Terrence Peterson is an Assistant Professor at Florida International University and a faculty affiliate in the Holocaust and Genocide Studies Program at FIU.
Daniel Schroeter, “Holocaust Victims in a Colonial Context: Contested Claims to Compensate Jews in North Africa during World War II”
Dr. Daniel Schroeter is the Amos S. Deinard Memorial Chair in Jewish History and Professor of History at the University of Minnesota
Convener: Rabbi Bruce Kadden, PLU
3:30 - 3:45 p.m. – Break
3:45 - 5:00 p.m. – Post-Holocaust Human Rights Issues in Africa, AUC Regency Room
Babafemi Akinrinade, “The Holocaust and Transitional Justice in Africa”
Professor Akinrinade is Assistant Professor of Human Rights at Fairhaven College of Interdisciplinary Studies and associate director of the Ray Walpow Institute for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity at Western Washington University.
5:00 p.m. – Dinner Break
5:30 p.m. – Pre-Keynote Reception, AUC Scandinavian Cultural Center
Join the speakers, University Leadership, and friends of PLU while enjoying heavy appetizers, wine and beer.
Advance purchase is required. Tickets cost $35.00.
7:00 p.m. – Keynote Address: “Wartime North Africa”, AUC Regency Room
The Holocaust is usually understood as a European story. Yet, this pivotal episode unfolded across North Africa and reverberated through politics, literature, memoir, and memory—Muslim as well as Jewish—in the post-war years. With UCLA colleague Aomar Boum, Sarah Abrevaya Stein has worked for a decade seeking out the stories of North Africans caught up in the dramas of the Second World War and Holocaust, authoring public-facing and scholarly writing on this topic, and delivering talks nationally and internationally on wartime North Africa. All told, their work blurs the boundaries of Holocaust Studies and North African Studies, suggesting, powerfully, that neither is complete without the other.
Sarah Abrevaya Stein, Sady and Ludwig Kahn Director of the Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies and the Viterbi Family Chair in Mediterranean Jewish Studies at UCLA.
Convener: Dr. Christopher R. Browning, Frank Porter Graham Professor of History at University of North Carolina
8:00 p.m. – AUC Gray Area
Please join us for a dessert reception following the keynote.
8:30 a.m. – AUC Gray Area
Registration & Coffee
9:15 - 10:25 a.m. – The Impact of the Holocaust on Tunisian Jewish Family’s: Survivor Stories, AUC Regency Room
Story of a Tunisian young girl facing with her family the Holocaust and the Point of No Return and finding her growth in France, Israel Canada, and United States.
Jacqueline Semha Gmach, A Tunisian-born, Sorbonne-trained American educator, Zoom presentation
Convener: Paul V. Regelbrugge, Director of Education, Holocaust Center for Humanity
10:30 - 11:15 a.m. – Break
11:15 a.m. - 12:20 p.m. – Survivor Voices, AUC Regency Room
Haim Saadoun, “History and Memory: The Story of One Family in Sfax, Tunisia during the German Occupation of Tunisia” Zoom Presentation
Dr. Saadoun is Professor Emeritus at the Open University in the Department of History, Philosophy and Judaic Studies in Israel, and the Director of the Center for Documentation on North African Jewry During World War II, The Ben Zvi Institute for the Study of Jewish Communities in the East, and member of the academic committee of the International Institute for Holocaust Research, Yad Vashem.
Convener: Lexi Jason, Education Program Manager, Holocaust Center for Humanity
12:30 - 1:30 p.m. – Lunch, AUC Chris Knutzen: Visit to Morocco with us
Zoom from Morocco with Dr. Benny Furst and Steven Koenig
Dr. Benny Furst is a teaching fellow at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and in the Technion. Steven Kohn is the son of a Dachau Concentration Camp Holocaust survivor and a nephew of an Auschwitz Concentration Camp Holocaust survivor. He is the recipient of the 2018 Zachor Award from the Jewish Federation of Sarasota/Manatee for Holocaust Awareness Studies and a 2023 Powell Teaching Fellow, Powell Summer Teaching Institute, Seattle Holocaust Center for Humanity.
Convener: Steven Koenig