SAN FRANCISCO and NEW YORK (June 15, 2016) — Dr. George Elbaum of San Francisco, a businessman and aerospace engineer, who writes and speaks about his experience as a child survivor of the Holocaust, was awarded an Honorary Fellowship on June 5 from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology. The ceremony took place during the Technion Board of Governors (BOG) meeting (June 4-8, 2016) on the university campus in Haifa.
Accompanied by his wife, Mimi Jensen, Dr. Elbaum was recognized for “devotion to the Technion and Israel . . . business accomplishments that have spanned the globe and bridged countries . . . and for sharing (your) story, in order to impart the message of tolerance to present and future generations.”
A steadfast supporter of the Technion and Israel, Dr. Elbaum is an active member of the American Technion Society (ATS) National Board of Directors, the ATS North Pacific Region Board and the Technion Board of Governors.
Together with his wife, he is a Technion Guardian — an honor reserved for those who support the Technion at the highest level. The couple has supported the Technion with gifts that include the George J. Elbaum Fund for the Satell Technion-MIT Leadership Program, the Whiteman International Foundation Fellowships (named after Dr. Elbaum's mother) in the Grand Technion Energy Program, and the Formula Student Race Car project.
Dr. Elbaum was born in Warsaw, Poland in 1938. As a child, he was smuggled out of the Warsaw ghetto and lived with a series of Polish families who hid him and his Jewish identity from the Nazis. Only he and his mother survived, as they lost 10 family members to the Holocaust. In 1949, Dr. Elbaum immigrated to the U.S., and in 1955 he enrolled at MIT, where he earned four degrees — a bachelor’s and a master’s in aeronautics and astronautics, along with a second master’s and a Ph.D. in nuclear engineering.
He began his career in Los Angeles in the aerospace industry, and then moved into the international business arena. In 1972, he co-founded Intertorg, a consulting firm representing American and European corporations in the Soviet Union (including General Motors, U.S. Steel, Reebok, etc.), where he marketed their products and services. After 25 years, he switched gears again, turning to commercial real estate investment and development.
In 2010, he wrote and published Neither Yesterdays Nor Tomorrows, a book of vignettes from his childhood during the Holocaust, and started speaking to student groups across the U.S. and in Poland about survival and tolerance. In 2014, he followed his first book with a second volume, Yesterdays Revisited, about the feedback/letters he’s received from students at the 100-plus venues where he’s spoken.
The five-day BOG meeting was comprised of award ceremonies and dedications, presentations by speakers that included Middle East expert Ambassador Dennis B. Ross, and other events such as an Innovation Panel Discussion, featuring Technion graduates such as Dov Moran, inventor of the DiskOnKey (USB flash drive). Other San Francisco-area participants included Ruth Owades and Lou Lenzen.
Photo: George Elbaum (right) receiving an Honorary Fellowship from Technion President Professor Peretz Lavie at an awards ceremony on the Haifa campus on June 5, 2016.
Legal CLE Program
Restitution After WWII: Suing Hitler's Business Partners
Wednesday, October 6, 2021 I 12pm PT
With Professor Michael Bazyler, Chapman University
Join the Holocaust Center for Humanity and legal professionals across Washington for a special legal program on restitution after WWII.
1 Law and Legal Procedure Washington State Bar Credit Available
register today!
The Holocaust was both the greatest mass murder and the greatest theft in modern history. This presentation will discuss how America’s civil justice system provided a measure of long overdue justice to Holocaust victims and heirs. We examine claims for return of Nazi-looted art, stolen Jewish real property in Europe, Holocaust-era insurance policies, slave labor, and bank deposits held by Swiss banks. Our focus will be on both past and ongoing litigation, including the latest Nazi-looted Holocaust case decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2021 (Phillip v. Germany), for which the speaker co-authored an amicus brief. We will also touch upon efforts to use the Holocaust restitution model as a template for other suits involving historical atrocities, including African-American reparations.
Michael Bazyler is a professor of law and the 1939 Law Scholar in Holocaust and Human Rights Studies at Chapman University. He has authored seven books and more than two dozen law review articles, book chapters, and essays on subjects covering Law and the Holocaust and restitution following genocide and other mass atrocities.
Thank you to our sponsor
Thank you to our Community Partner
Thank you to our Lawyers Committee: Ruth Atherton | Marc Boman | Kathy Feldman | Christina MacDonald | Chuck Maduell | Jay Riffkin | Rob Spitzer | Jeff Sprung
October 6, 2021 CLE Lecture Readings
Restitution After WWII: Suing Hitler's Business Partners
1. https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/ilj/vol25/iss6/4/
2. https://www.jcpa.org/phas/phas-bazyler-f04.htm
3. https://brooklynworks.brooklaw.edu/bjil/vol28/iss3/2/
4. https://www.wsj.com/articles/supreme-court-denies-holocaust-victims-property-claims-against-nazi-germany-hungary-11612392627
5.https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/18/18-1447/159037/20201028173235296_Simon%20Philipp%20-%20Amicus%20Brief%20FINAL.pdf
UPCOMING LUNCH-AND-LEARN PROGRAMS:
12:00 - 1:00pm (Pacific Time) Every Tuesday. Join us for our weekly Lunch-and-Learn series to hear children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors, notable speakers on timely issues, and historical experts.
These programs aim to present perspectives and voices that challenge and inspire people to confront bigotry, racism, and indifference, and to consider how their actions make a difference.
Disclaimer: The views, information, or opinions expressed in these programs are solely those of the individuals involved and do not necessarily represent those of the Holocaust Center for Humanity and its employees.
VIEW PREVIOUS LUNCH-AND-LEARN PROGRAMS
Join us September 21, 28, October 6, 12, 19, & 26 for a special series, "Connecting the Holocaust to Today."
The Light of Days: The Untold Story of Women Resistance
Fighters in Hitler's Ghettos
Tuesday, September 21, 2021 | 12:00pm PT
With Judy Batalion
REGISTER TODAY
While conducting research on poet and Special Operations Executive member Hanna Senesh, Judy Batalion unexpectedly found the 1946 Yiddish book, Freuen in di Ghettos (Women in the Ghettos), filled with accounts about young Jewish women who defied the Nazis. These Polish-Jewish “ghetto girls” paid off Gestapo guards, hid revolvers in teddy bears, flirted with Nazis, and shot them. They distributed underground bulletins, flung Molotov cocktails, bombed German supply trains, organized soup kitchens, and were bearers of the truth about what was happening to the Jews. In this discussion, Judy will relay several of these women’s stories, describe her years of research into the history of Polish-Jewish resistance, and discuss why so many of these tales remained hidden for so long.
Join Judy Batalion, New York Times-bestselling author of the highly-acclaimed The Light of Days: The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitler’s Ghettos, published by William Morrow in April 2021. The Light of Days has been published in a young readers’ edition, will be translated into nineteen languages, and has been optioned by Steven Spielberg for a major motion picture for which Judy is co-writing the screenplay.
Ordinary Men Revisited Three Decades Later
Tuesday, September 28, 2021 |
12pm PT
With Christopher Browning
register today
What turns an ordinary man into a cold-hearted murderer? Nearly 30 years ago, author Christopher Browning brought us the dark history of those whose duty it was to accomplish the Nazi Final Solution in Ordinary Men. The book documented the true story of Reserve Police Battalion 101 of the German Order Police, a paramilitary formation of men comprised of average, middle-aged working class German men who were responsible for mass shootings as well as round-ups of Jewish people for deportation to Nazi death camps in Poland in 1942. Browning’s book examined how quickly these seemingly ordinary people were twisted by ideological indoctrination, loyalty to the battalion, and ultimately cowardice and bigotry, to sink into the depths of savagery under Hitler to murder millions of Jewish people and other “undesirables.”
This talk will look at the origins and initial arguments of the book, the critiques it faced in the 1990s, and subsequent developments in Perpetrator Studies.
Thank you to our Community Partners:
Legal CLE Program
Restitution After WWII: Suing Hitler's Business Partners
Wednesday, October 6, 2021 I 12pm PT
With Professor Michael Bazyler, Chapman University
Join the Holocaust Center for Humanity and legal professionals across Washington for a special legal program on restitution after WWII.
register today
The Holocaust was both the greatest mass murder and the greatest theft in modern history. This presentation will discuss how America’s civil justice system provided a measure of long overdue justice to Holocaust victims and heirs. We examine claims for return of Nazi-looted art, stolen Jewish real property in Europe, Holocaust-era insurance policies, slave labor, and bank deposits held by Swiss banks. Our focus will be on both past and ongoing litigation, including the latest Nazi-looted Holocaust case decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2021 (Phillip v. Germany), for which the speaker co-authored an amicus brief. We will also touch upon efforts to use the Holocaust restitution model as a template for other suits involving historical atrocities, including African-American reparations.
Michael Bazyler is a professor of law and the 1939 Law Scholar in Holocaust and Human Rights Studies at Chapman University. He has authored seven books and more than two dozen law review articles, book chapters, and essays on subjects covering Law and the Holocaust and restitution following genocide and other mass atrocities.
1 Law and Legal Procedure Washington State Bar Credit Available
Thank you to our sponsor:
Thank you to our Community Partners:
Thank you to our Lawyers Committee: Ruth Atherton | Marc Boman | Kathy Feldman | Christina MacDonald | Chuck Maduell | Jay Riffkin | Rob Spitzer | Jeff Sprung
October 6, 2021 CLE Lecture Readings
Restitution After WWII: Suing Hitler's Business Partners
1. https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/ilj/vol25/iss6/4/
2. https://www.jcpa.org/phas/phas-bazyler-f04.htm
3. https://brooklynworks.brooklaw.edu/bjil/vol28/iss3/2/
4. https://www.wsj.com/articles/supreme-court-denies-holocaust-victims-property-claims-against-nazi-germany-hungary-11612392627
5. https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/18/18-1447/159037/20201028173235296_Simon%20Philipp%20-%20Amicus%20Brief%20FINAL.pdf
“That is 800 children”: Nazi Germany, the United States, and
(Dismantling) Global
Anti-Blackness
Tuesday, October 12, 2021 | 12:00pm-1:00pm PT
With Dr. Emanuela Kucik
register today
What is the relationship between Nazi Germany and anti-Blackness—and of the role of the United States in that relationship? Dr. Emanuela Kucik will provide an expanded narrative of the Holocaust and of racialized violence around the world to better understand the global intersections of oppressive systems. In showing how these connected structures sustain each other, she will demonstrate that dismantling one piece of systemic oppression will begin to unravel the others.
This presentation will use stories of two different Black people who lived in Germany during the first half of the 20th-century. Such stories highlight and foreground the experiences of people from marginalized groups and are a crucial, transformative component in our continued fight for a just and equitable world.
Dr. Emanuela Kucik is an Assistant Professor of English and Africana Studies and the Co-Director of the Africana Studies Program at Muhlenberg College. She is committed to intertwining scholarship and activism to highlight how literature can combat genocide, its precursors, and its reverberations.
My Family's Story: Survival, Escape, and Immigration
Tuesday, October 19, 2021 | 12pm PT
Daphna Robon tells the story of her parents, Imre Friedmann and Naomi Kraus. Both natives of Budapest, Hungary, they endured not only the antisemitism of pre-war Europe, but the persecution of the Nazi regime; Imre in a labor camp and Naomi hidden in a Swiss “safe house” under a false identity. Following the war, Imre escaped to Vienna where he was able to earn his Ph.D., eventually immigrating to become a professor at Hebrew University in Jerusalem where he met Naomi. She also earned a Ph.D. at the university and they eventually relocated to the U.S. to highly successful careers.
Daphna was born in Israel and spent most of her childhood years in Houston, Texas. She now lives in the Seattle area with her family and began sharing her family story as a Holocaust Center speaker in 2021. Daphna has a strong passion for doing what she can to stop antisemitism and racism.
The Ravine: A Family, A Photograph, A Holocaust Massacre
Revealed
Tuesday, October 26 | 12pm PT
With Dr. Wendy Lower
register today
In 2009, Dr. Wendy Lower, the acclaimed author of Hitler’s Furies, was shown a photograph newly revealed to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. While the documentation of the Holocaust is vast, there are only a few known images of Jewish families at the actual moment of murder, in this disturbing photo, by German officials and Ukrainian collaborators. A Ukrainian shooter’s rifle is inches from a woman’s head, obscured in a cloud of smoke. The woman is bending forward, holding the hand of a barefoot boy. And—only one of the shocking revelations of Dr. Lower’s 10-year investigation of this image—the shins of another child, slipping from the woman’s lap.
Dr. Lower’s detective work—in Ukraine, Germany, Slovakia, Israel, and the United States—recovers astonishing layers of detail concerning the open-air massacres in Ukraine. Her search for the identities of the victims, of the killers—and, remarkably, of the photographer who openly took the picture, as a secret act of resistance—are dramatically uncovered. Finally, in the hands of this scholar, a single image unlocks a new understanding of the place of the family unit in the history and aftermath of Nazi genocide.
Wendy Lower, Ph.D., is the John K. Roth Professor of History and George R. Roberts Fellow at Claremont McKenna College and chairs the Academic Committee of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and served as its Acting Director at the Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies.
clicK HERE to view previous Lunch-and-Learn programs
Thank you to our 2021 Lunch-and-Learn Sponsors:
The Frances Roth & Stanley R. Schill Foundation
Thank you to the grantors, companies, and individuals who have made this year's Lunch-and-Learn series possible. If you or your company are interested in sponsoring one or more Lunch-and-Learns throughout the year, please contact Nicole Bela: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
