Upcoming Events
Friday, September 25 | 12:00pm (Pacific Time)
We are excited to gather virtually for the first time on Friday, September 25 for our 2020 Voices for Humanity Luncheon.
As scapegoating and fear are on the rise, teaching empathy and resilience through the lens of the Holocaust is more important than ever. If there was ever a time when our students, teachers, and community needed the support of the Holocaust Center for Humanity's programs and resources, it is now.
Join the Holocaust Center for Humanity as we dedicate this year's virtual luncheon to our hardworking students and teachers and honor past Board President, David Alhadeff, with the 2020 Voices for Humanity award.
Together we define what is possible. The Voices for Humanity Luncheon is the Center’s signature event that funds close to half of our programming each year. Our work wouldn’t be possible without supporters like you. Please consider making an early and meaningful gift today in support of the Center’s important mission. To donate go here.
2020 Voices for Humanity Event Chairs - Paul and Leora Bloom
2020 Voices for Humanity Award Recipient - David Alhadeff
Segregated King County: Race, Neighborhoods, and Inequality
Tuesday, September 22 | 12:00-1:00pm (PT)
James Gregory, professor of History at the University of Washington and director of the Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project, and Shaun Scott, filmmaker and journalist, will explore the history of segregation in Seattle and King County and its ongoing legacy that continues to shape our region.
Racial restrictive covenants made it impossible for African Americans, Asians, and Jews to buy or rent in many neighborhoods. This history haunts our region today resulting in unequal access to housing, wealth, jobs, justice, health, life and death. Zoom link available upon registration.
Thank you to our community partners on this program:
UPCOMING LUNCH-AND-LEARN PROGRAMS:
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.
12:00 - 1:00pm (Pacific Time) Every Tuesday - Lunch-and-Learns will be offered at the same time every Tuesday.
Tuesday, September 29 | Practice Radical Empathy: Storytelling to Build an Equitable World
Join Luis Ortega, founder and director of Storytellers for Change, as he delivers an engaging and empowering message about the power of storytelling and story-listening to foster radical empathy, promote dialogue, and to build an inclusive and equitable world. In this virtual presentation, Luis will invite the audience to explore the role of connection, empathy, and belonging in communities. How do we co-create spaces for connection? How can we expand our empathetic capacity? What does belonging mean to you? A key part of the answer to these questions is stories. After all, what brings us closer to each other is knowing our individual and collective narratives. When a community or society has the ability to know, see, and hear the stories of everyone, we can expand our "circle of human concern" and close empathy gaps. Zoom link available upon registration.
America and the Holocaust: 3-Part Series
Co-Sponsored by the Holocaust and Genocide Studies Program and the Kurt Mayer Chair of Holocaust Studies at Pacific Lutheran University
Register for one or all three programs | Flyer (pdf)
Thank you to our generous supporter: The Powell Family Foundation
-
Tuesday, October 6 | Hell Before Their Very Eyes: American Soldiers Liberate Concentration Camps in Germany
With Dr. John McManus, Military Historian, who sheds new light on a relatively overlooked aspect of the Holocaust, namely the experiences of American soldiers who liberated or witnessed concentration camps. Drawing on the rich blend of archival sources and first hand accounts, including unit journals, interviews, oral histories, memoirs, diaries, letters, and published recollections that provided the foundation for his book "Hell Before Their Very Eyes," he will discuss the realities of the liberation of Ohrdruf, Buchenwald and Dachau.
-
Tuesday, October 13 | Rescue Board: The Untold Story of America's Efforts to Save the Jews of Europe
With Dr. Rebecca Erbelding, Historian, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and author of Rescue Board. America has long been criticized for refusing to give harbor to the Jews during World War II as Hitler and the Nazis closed in. Yet few know the extraordinary unknown story of the War Refugee Board, a US government effort late in the war to save the remaining European Jews. In January 1944, facing mounting public pressure and pressure within his administration to do more to aid European Jews, President Franklin Roosevelt agreed to create a new government agency, the War Refugee Board, empowering it to rescue the victims of Nazi persecution. Over the next twenty months, John Pehle, the young Treasury Department lawyer tasked with heading this operation, pulled together D.C. pencil pushers, international relief workers, smugglers, diplomats, millionaires, and rabble-rousers to run operations across four continents and a dozen countries. They tricked Nazis, forged identity papers, maneuvered food and medicine into concentration camps, recruited spies, leaked news stories, laundered money, negotiated ransoms, and funneled millions of dollars into Europe. This is the story of how the United States War Refugee Board saved tens of thousands of lives.
-
Tuesday, October 20 | Atrocity Pictures: Antisemitism, the Holocaust, and the Hollywood Studio System Before 1948
With Dr. Steven Carr, Indiana University-Purdue University, Fort Wayne, and author of Atrocity Pictures. Much of the discussion about Hollywood and anti-Semitism has assumed anti-Semitism came out of Hollywood. Less attention has considered antisemitism directed toward Hollywood. With both increasing political instability and the resurgence of organized hate groups in the U.S., anti-Semitic allegations of Jewish control over the media today remain poised to regain mainstream traction. This informal Q&A will discuss how anti-Semitic allegations of Jewish control over Hollywood helped shape popular depictions of Nazism and the Holocaust in mainstream Hollywood film. With the memory of World War I still fresh in the minds of many Americans, along with a growing isolationist alliance against President Roosevelt, the Hollywood studio system throughout the 1930s and 40s found itself caught between intensifying public opinion accusing the industry of either not doing enough to combat Nazism, or accusing it of pushing the country into war to serve Jewish interests.
Tuesday, October 27 | What It Means To Be "News-Literate"
With John Silva, News Literacy Project. John Silva will provide an overview of essential news literacy skills to stay reliably informed. He will discuss the difficulty in, and importance of recognizing news vs. opinion, how to identify misinformation and evaluate evidence, and how to discern various types and forms of bias. John Silva is the Sr. Director of Education, Training, for the News Literacy Project.
Tuesday, November 3 | Hana Kern: The Legacy of Theresienstadt
Daughter of Tom Lenda, a child survivor of Theresienstadt, Hana Kern shares her father's experiences. Tom Lenda was one of the very few Jewish children to survive the camp Theresienstadt in Czechoslovakia.
Tuesday, November 10 | Details Coming Soon!
Tuesday, November 17 | Technology, the Holocaust, and Human Rights
With Professor Clyde Ford, author of Think Black. THINK BLACK (HarperCollins, Sept. 2019), began as a memoir about Clyde Ford's father, John Stanley Ford, the first Black software engineer in America. But it soon became something much more, after his editor asked him to investigate his father’s relationship with Thomas J. Watson, the founder of IBM.
The elder Ford had just returned from World War II. He was in school on the G.I. Bill, studying to be an accountant, when Watson hired him into a career at IBM. Was this altruism and a desire for social good on Watson’s part, or was it something more?
Clyde Ford went in search of an answer. Ford was shocked, and deeply disturbed, to uncover IBM’s central role in eugenics, the Holocaust, apartheid, and racial profiling through facial recognition. What began as a story about his father, soon enlarged into a cautionary tale about the dark side of high technology and recommendation about what must change.
Clyde W. Ford is an award-winning author of 12 works of fiction and non-fiction. He’s also a psychotherapist, mythologist, and sought-after public speaker. Clyde’s the recipient of the 2006 Zora Neale Hurston-Richard Wright Award in African American Literature. He’s been a featured guest on the Oprah Winfrey Show, National Public Radio, and numerous television and radio programs. Clyde lives in Bellingham, Washington.
Teachers can earn 1 clock hour on selected discussions.
Join engaging and highly interactive discussions of select popular Holocaust texts. Open to teachers, students, parents and anyone else.
Come prepared with questions and/or ideas you'd like to discuss, or just sit in and join the discussion.
Discussions are led by:
Paul Regelbrugge is the Professional Development and Curriculum Coordinator for the Holocaust Center for Humanity. Previously, following a career as an attorney in his native Detroit and Chicago, Paul taught for 14 years in Chicago, Buffalo, Spokane and, most recently, Kent. He is also the author of The Yellow Star House: The Remarkable Story of One Boy's Survival in a Protected House in Hungary (2019).
Kate Boris-Brown has been a supporter and volunteer at the Holocaust Center since 2015, assisting in the library and traveling with the Center to Poland, Austria, Czech Republic, and Israel. Books are her passion, especially books on the Holocaust, the refugee experience and Russian history. Her preferred vacation activity is scouting European bookstores for Holocaust and history publications. She has a B.A. in Literature, Graduate studies in Russian Language and post-retirement, earned UW Professional and Continuing Education Certificates in three writing programs: Nonfiction Writing, Literary Fiction I and II.
Register below and a Zoom link to join the discussion will be sent to you. Questions? Please email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
The Yellow Star House: The Remarkable Story of One Boy's Survival In a Protected House In Hungary
By Paul Regelbrugge
Wednesday, September 23 | 4:00-5:00pm (Pacific Time)
Teachers: Earn 1 clock hour for attending. This book is excellent for grade 8 - adult.
Between May 15 and July 9, 1944, over 440,000 Hungarian Jews were deported and, most were murdered at Auschwitz-Birkenau. The sole exception was the Jews in Budapest. In October 1944, Nazi Lieutenant Colonel Adolf Eichmann, with the eager assistance of the Hungarian fascist Arrow Cross party, initiated plans to finish off the Jews of Budapest even as the Soviet Red Army was rapidly advancing, and ultimately laid siege on Budapest in December 1944. This is the story of how one Jewish boy and 400 others were protected in a "yellow star house." The house was converted into a hospital run by Jewish doctors designed to treat everyone -- even their wounded enemies, free of charge. The Jewish residents were ultimately saved in this way by a man who posed as an Arrow Cross officer and risked his own life countless times while over 70,000 Jews were being murdered at the Danube or dying in ghettos. The Yellow Star House is a story of courage, family, hope, rescue and luck.
Author Paul Regelbrugge, a teacher in Spokane, WA at the time, asked survivor Robert Holczer to come and speak to his 6th grade class. His students were enthralled by the unique story of Robert and the motivations of his rescuer. Paul and Robert became friends over the last decade of Robert's life and Paul became one of the few people trusted to record Robert's story. From these stories and interviews comes Paul's first book, and one of the first books on this incredible story of the rescue of 400 Jews in the middle of Budapest, Hungary: The Yellow Star House.
Kate Boris-Brown will interview author Paul Regelbrugge and facilitate discussion. Discussion will include suggestions for how to use this book with students (grade 8 and up).
Maus by Art Spiegelman
Wednesday, October 14 | 4:00-5:00pm (Pacific Time)
Teachers: Earn 1 clock hour! Maus is an excellent book for students in grade 9 - adult.
A brutally moving work of art—widely hailed as the greatest graphic novel ever written—Maus recounts the chilling experiences of the author’s father during the Holocaust, with Jews drawn as wide-eyed mice and Nazis as menacing cats.
Maus is a haunting tale within a tale, weaving the author’s account of his tortured relationship with his aging father into an astonishing retelling of one of history's most unspeakable tragedies. It is an unforgettable story of survival and a disarming look at the legacy of trauma.
Discussion led by Professor Lisa Marcus. Lisa Marcus is Professor of English and Chair of the Holocaust and Genocide Studies Program at Pacific Lutheran University. She teaches several Holocaust-focused courses, including most recently a literature class on Anne Frank as a Holocaust icon, and a seminar on contemporary American narratives of slavery and the Holocaust. Her recent publications include essays on Holocaust survivor and poet Irena Klepfisz, immigrant Jewish-American writer Anzia Yezierska, the Jewish American Girl doll, Rebecca Rubin, and a poem “I did not lose my father at Auschwitz,” based on a trip she took with her father to Poland and Moldova. Ongoing projects include Finding Zlata Jampolski, which links her grandmother's immigration story to the Jewish American texts she studies, and “Please don’t let this be the ending”: Paula Vogel’s Indecent and LGBT Holocaust history.”
A Train Near Magdeburg: A Teacher's Journey Into the Holocaust by Matthew Rozell
Wednesday, October 28 | 4:00-5:00pm (Pacific Time)
Drawing on never-before published eye-witness accounts, survivor testimony and memoirs, wartime reports and letters, Matthew Rozell takes us on his journey to uncover the stories behind the incredible 1945 liberation photographs taken by the soldiers who were there. He weaves together a chronology of the Holocaust as it unfolds across Europe and goes to the authentic sites of the Holocaust to retrace the steps of the survivors and the American soldiers who freed them. His mission culminates in joyful reunions on three continents, seven decades later. Rozell offers his unique perspective on the lessons of the Holocaust for future generations, and the impact that one person, a teacher, can make.
In this book, the true story behind an iconic photograph taken at the liberation of a death train deep in the heart of Nazi Germany―brought to life by the history teacher who discovered it, and went on to reunite hundreds of Holocaust survivors with the actual American soldiers who saved them.
Discussion led by Kate Boris-Brown.
Milkweed by Jerry Spinelli
Thursday, November 12 | 4:00-5:00pm (Pacific Time)
Teachers: Earn 1 Clock Hour.
He's a boy called Jew. Gypsy. Stopthief. Filthy son of Abraham.
He's a boy who lives in the streets of Warsaw. He's a boy who steals food for himself, and the other orphans. He's a boy who believes in bread, and mothers, and angels.
He's a boy who wants to be a Nazi, with tall, shiny jackboots of his own-until the day that suddenly makes him change his mind.
And when the trains come to empty the Jews from the ghetto of the damned, he's a boy who realizes it's safest of all to be nobody.
Newbery Medalist Jerry Spinelli takes us to one of the most devastating settings imaginable-Nazi-occupied Warsaw during World War II-and tells a tale of heartbreak, hope, and survival through the bright eyes of a young Holocaust orphan.
Discussion led by Paul Regelbrugge will include how to use this book with students (for grades 7 and up), and related educational resources.
The People on the Beach: Journeys to Freedom After the Holocaust
by Rosie Whitehouse
Wednesday, December 9 | 4:00-5:00pm (Pacific Time)
One summer's night in 1946, over 1,000 European Jews waited silently on an Italian beach to board a secret ship. They had survived Auschwitz, hidden and fought in forests and endured death marches--now they were taking on the Royal Navy, running the British blockade of Palestine.
From Eastern Europe to Israel via Germany and Italy, Rosie Whitehouse follows in the footsteps of those secret passengers, uncovering their extraordinary stories--some told for the first time. Who were those people on the beach? Where and what had they come from, and how had they survived? Why, after being liberated, did so many Jews still feel unsafe in Europe? How do we--and don't we--remember the Holocaust today? This remarkable, important book digs deep and travels far in search of answers.
Discussion led by Kate Boris-Brown.
Teacher Workshop | Thursday, October 29, 2020 | 3:30-4:30pm (Pacific Time) | Virtual Program | Open to all educators | Earn 1 Clock Hour
Learn how to teach students to stop using the phrase “fake news” and to identify the many types of misleading, inaccurate and false information that they encounter every day. We use examples of misinformation to engage students in news literacy and civic learning, and we introduce digital verification skills and tools for debunking manipulated and false images. We also explain the standards of quality journalism, such as fairness, verification, balance and context.
Presented by John Silva, NBCT, Sr. Director of Education, Training, for the News Literacy Project.
Funding for this program was made possible, in part, due to a grant from the Tillie and Alfred Shemanski Testamentary Trust.
"I believe very strongly this is the most hopeful place in the city." - Local Holocaust Survivor Steve Adler
Finding Light in the Darkness - Through stories and artifacts of Washington State Holocaust survivors, the museum’s exhibit engages visitors in this history and challenges them to consider how each person’s actions make a difference.
Visitors to the Holocaust Center can take a Virtual Reality tour of the Anne Frank annex, interact with embedded testimony screens that feature survivors and stories of coming to Seattle, explore artifacts that bring history to life, and learn about local students who are upstanders in their schools and communities.
TICKETS
Open Wednesdays and Sundays | 10am - 4pm
Group Tours & Field Trips by appointment every day except Saturday
At the Henry and Sandra Friedman Holocaust Center for Humanity | 2045 2nd Avenue, Seattle, WA 98121
At the entrance to the Holocaust Center for Humanity are photos of children who experienced the Holocaust. All are survivors who later moved to the Seattle region, with the exception of one. Come visit and learn more about the stories. Photo by Alan Berner, Seattle Times staff photographer.
A bookcase opens to reveal a photograph of the stairs leading to Anne Frank's hiding place in Amsterdam during the Nazi occupation. Explore this feature and learn more about Anne Frank when you visit the Holocaust Center. Photo by Alan Berner, Seattle Times staff photographer.
A memorial to the 6 million Jewish people murdered in the Holocaust and the millions of other victims invites visitors to leave notes, prayers and wishes at the Holocaust Center. Photo by Alan Berner, Seattle Times staff photographer.
Train tracks at the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp in Poland at the Holocaust Center for Humanity. Designed by architects Olson Kundig. Photo by Stefanie Felix.
This exhibit was supported, in part, by 4Culture/King County Lodging Tax and The State of Washington.
The development and training of museum tour guides (docents) is made possible with the generous support of the Union Pacific Foundation.