2024 Powell-Heller Conference to Spotlight Sephardic Jewish Experiences in the Holocaust

PLU will host the 16th Annual Powell-Heller Conference for Holocaust Education from November 6-8, 2024. This year’s conference, titled Sephardic Jewish Voices and Experiences in the Holocaust, focuses on the lesser-known stories of Sephardic Jews during World War II.

The conference brings together scholars and educators to examine how Sephardic Jewish communities — primarily from Spain, Portugal, North Africa and the Middle East — endured the Holocaust. The Sephardic experience shows their suffering spanned multiple countries and continents. Their distinctive characteristics, such as speaking Ladino and pronouncing Hebrew differently than their Ashkenazi counterparts, deserve further study to deepen our understanding of the Holocaust’s complexity.

The 2024 conference coincides with a significant milestone in PLU’s history: the 50th anniversary of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the university. In 1974, renowned Holocaust scholar and Frank Porter Graham Professor of History at the University of North Carolina Christopher Browning, fresh from graduate school, began teaching the first course on the Holocaust at PLU. Since then, the university has sustained a commitment to Holocaust education unmatched by other institutions in the Pacific Northwest.

As part of the 50th-anniversary celebration, two PLU alumni — Molly Loberg ’98, now a professor at Cal Poly, and Laura Brade ’08, now a History teacher at the Park School of Baltimore and served as an assistant professor at Albion College — will return to campus to present and discuss their research trajectory since studying with renowned Holocaust scholars Christopher Browning and Mayer Chair of Holocaust History Emeritus Robert P. Ericksen at PLU.

“This year marks a special moment in our program’s history,” said The Kurt Mayer Chair of Holocaust Studies, Associate Professor of History Beth Griech-Polelle.

“We also wanted to honor the contributions of the Mayer family, particularly the close relationship between Christopher Browning, Robert Ericksen and Kurt Mayer. Though I never had the pleasure of meeting Kurt, we hope the final event of this year’s conference serves as a way of thanking all our PLU students, faculty, and community members for their continued support.”

This year’s Powell-Heller Conference is part of PLU’s ongoing commitment to Holocaust education, ensuring the stories and lessons of the Holocaust continue to be shared and remembered. By focusing on the experiences of Sephardic Jews — a group often overlooked in mainstream Holocaust education — the conference broadens the conversation through scholarship, personal testimony, and historical research, deepening our understanding of this complex and devastating period in history.

The event is free and open to the public, but registration is required. For more information about the conference, including the full schedule and registration details, visit PLU’s Powell-Heller Conference page.