Holocaust Rescuer Profiled in Exhibit
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 27, 2000
Lacey Williams
Joe Wills
530-898-4143
Holocaust Rescuer Profiled in Exhibit
During World War II, New York journalist Varian Fry organized a rescue network to smuggle nearly 2,000 Jewish intellectuals, artists, writers and musicians out of Europe during the “Final Solution.”
From April 3-28, California State University, Chico’s Modern Jewish and Israel Studies Program will be hosting “Varian Fry Assignment: Rescue, 1940-1941,” a traveling exhibition from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C.
Fry’s original mission of three weeks began in 1940 and stretched into 14 months, ending only after he was forcibly thrown out of France. Fry is responsible for rescuing anti-Nazi refugees including Sigmund Freud, painters Marc Chagall and Max Ernst and writers Franz Werfel, Hans Habe and Hannah Arendt.
The exhibition will be located in the Humanities Gallery, Trinity Hall, room 100.
The exhibition opens April 3 with a reception at 7 p.m. and a talk by Walter Meyerhof, Ph.D., a retired Stanford professor who was rescued by Fry. Meyerhof is the son of Nobel Prize winner Otto Meyerhof.
The museum is open Monday through Thursday from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. and on Fridays from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. The exhibit will be closed on the weekends. Throughout the month there will be special events and additional speakers.
On April 13 from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. and on April14 from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m., there will be a marathon viewing of “Shoah,” a film about the Holocaust by director Claude Lanzmann.
On April 17 at 6 p.m., Laurence Baron, director of the Lipinsky Institute for Judaic Studies at San Diego State University, will speak about his research on Holocaust rescuers.
On April 27, Natalie Birk, director of Public Programs for the U.S. Holocaust Museum and a CSU, Chico alumna, will talk about “The Role of the Museum in Understanding the Holocaust.”
This exhibit is made possible through the support of the Koret Foundation and United States Holocaust Memorial Museum as part of the CSU, Chico Modern Jewish and Israel Studies Program’s Holocaust and Genocide Courses.
For more information, contact Professor Sam Edelman at 530-898-4336 or e-mail: sedleman@csuchico.edu or Professor Carol Edelman at 530-898-4767 or e-mail: cedelman@csuchico.edu.
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