Quick event guide: America and the Holocaust | Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle

Quick event guide: America and the Holocaust  

 

A local event, a PBS special, and an exhibit in Washington, D.C. are all focused on America and the Holocaust. 

Local event Sept. 18 

“Mickey Mouse and the Holocaust.” Northwestern professor and author Danny M. Cohen will explore Holocaust memory with an interactive experience that will focus on historical photographs. Reconsider how we perceive the past. Using only the evidence within each frame, attendees and Cohen will attempt to determine what the photographs, and the people in them, tell us about the Holocaust. Together, attendees and Cohen are to find lessons for our contemporary world and a connection to pop culture today. Nathan and Esther Pelz Holocaust Education Resource Center, a program of Milwaukee Jewish Federation. Sunday, Sept. 18, 1-2:30 p.m. RSVP: 414-963-2710. HolocaustCenterMilwaukee.org/MickeyMouse. 

Ken Burns on PBS – Sept. 18-20 

“The U.S. and the Holocaust,” a three-part, six-hour documentary directed and produced by Ken Burns, Lynn Novick and Sarah Botsein, will air Sept. 18, 19 and 20 from 7-9 p.m. on PBS. The broadcast will be accompanied by educational materials for middle and high school classrooms. The documentary is meant to dispel myths that Americans were ignorant of the persecution of Jews or looked on the catastrophe with indifference. With first-hand testimonies from witnesses who were children in the 1930s. 

In Washington, D.C. – Ongoing 

Planning a visit to D.C.? See the exhibit that inspired the Ken Burns film, “The U.S. and the Holocaust.” The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s “Americans and the Holocaust” exhibition addresses: What did the U.S. government and the American people know about the threats posed by Nazi Germany? What responses were possible? And when? This exhibition examines the motives, pressures and fears that shaped Americans’ responses to Nazism, war and genocide. Ushmm.org.