The annual Baxt Lecture Series was created in 2013 to provide comprehensive Holocaust education to the greater Rhode Island community. Topics have included FDR & the Jews, History of Antisemitism, Berlin after the Holocaust & more.
This free programming provides PLUs to educators.
Free and open to the public.
Winter 2026 Baxt Lecture: The Holocaust from the Perspective of Jewish Children and Older Adults
December 9 @ 6:00 pm – 7:00 pm EST
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.
RSVP here.
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.
Spring 2027 Baxt Lecture: Queer Desire and the Holocaust
April 8, 2027 @ 6:00 pm – 7:00 pm EDT
Presented in partnership with the Bristol Holocaust and Genocide Center
Join award-winning historian Dr. Anna Hájková for the Baxt Lecture. Based on her National Jewish Book Award-winning book, People Without History Are Dust, Dr. Hájková explores the overlooked history of queer Jews during the Holocaust and demonstrates how recovering these stories broadens our understanding of the Holocaust through inclusive and feminist perspectives.
Content Advisory: This program includes discussion of sexual violence.
RSVP here.
Dr. Anna Hájková is Reader in Modern European Continental History at the University of Warwick and a pioneering scholar of queer Holocaust history. She is the author of The Last Ghetto: An Everyday History of Theresienstadt and People Without History Are Dust: Queer Desire in the Holocaust, winner of the 75th National Jewish Book Award.
Past Baxt Lectures
