Baxt Lecture: The Holocaust from the Perspective of Jewish Children and Older Adults 

How did Jewish children experience the Holocaust? Were all older Jewish adults slated for immediate destruction? Why are their histories marginalized? What do we learn by zooming in on the lives of younger and older Jews during the Holocaust? This program will engage with these and other questions and reveal how the personal and collective histories of older Jews and of Jewish children were often intertwined because of Nazi racist anti-Jewish ideology and policy. These histories will illuminate the agency that these two age groups have been denied for all too long. 

A Polish Jewish family walks on the Planty in Kraków, Poland, 1935. From left to right: Chaim Horowitz, Josef Horowitz, Romek Zimet (the donor’s cousin), and Izaak Horowitz (the donor’s grandfather). United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Dola Kogan & Josef Horowitz.

RSVP here.

Free and open to the public.

Dr. Joanna Sliwa is a historian at the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (Claims Conference), where she also administers academic programs. Joanna is a historian of the Holocaust and modern Polish Jewish history. She is the author of the award-winning book, “Jewish Childhood in Kraków: A Microhistory of the Holocaust,” co-author with Elizabeth (Barry) White of “The Counterfeit Countess: The Jewish Woman Who Rescued Thousands of Poles during the Holocaust,” and co-editor with Christine Schmidt and Elizabeth Anthony of “Older Jews and the Holocaust: Persecution, Displacement, and Survival.” Joanna has taught Jewish and Holocaust history at universities, advised and served as an educator in teacher training programs on the Holocaust, and served as a researcher and translator for academic projects, films, TV programs, and exhibits.