Three local organizations are sponsoring several events at the University this week in honor of Holocaust Awareness Week and the 60th anniversary of the liberation of
prisoners at Auschwitz concentration camp.
The Jewish Student Union, Oregon Hillel and the University Cultural Forum are sponsoring speeches, films, poetry readings, a special Shabbat service and a 24-hour reading of names of people who died during the Holocaust.
- Lecture by Zvonimir Hacko and showing of “Hotel Rwanda” — 6:30 p.m. today in 100 Willamette. Hacko, an expert on the portrayal of the Holocaust through music, will lecture about genocide worldwide. “Hotel Rwanda” is an Oscar-nominated film about the Tutsi tribe’s struggle against the Hutu militia
in Rwanda. - Holocaust survivors — 6 p.m. Tuesday in the EMU Fir Room. Holocaust survivors Eva and Les Aigner will share their eyewitness accounts of the Holocaust. The Aigners, who both lost members of their families in the Holocaust, met, married and left communist Hungary in 1956.
- Former neo-Nazi T.J. Leyden’s lecture — 7 p.m. Wednesday in the EMU Ballroom. Leyden spent 15 years as a neo-Nazi activist and
recruiter and is the only known person to leave the movement and retain his birth name. Leyden was invited by former President Clinton to speak at a White House conference on hate and has helped train the FBI and the Pentagon on tactics for combating neo-Nazi organizations. - Sephardic Poetry: Lost Jewish Voices — 3 p.m. Thursday in 246 Gerlinger. University assistant professor Monique Balbuena will hold a reading of Holocaust-related poetry.
- Shabbat Service — Governor’s residence in Salem. Gov. Ted Kulongoski has invited Jewish students to join him for a Shoah Shabbat service at his residence.
— Jared Paben
