At Oregon State University, we have observed Holocaust Memorial Week every year since 1987. The breadth and the duration of our effort are unmatched in the Pacific Northwest. This program grows from the belief that educational institutions can do much to combat prejudice of all kinds, and to foster respect for the diversity that is America, by promoting an awareness of the Holocaust, perhaps the most horrific historical indicator of the high cost of prejudice. It is particularly important to teach young people about the Holocaust, so that coming generations will not forget the lessons that a preceding one learned at such cost. This emphasis recalls the motto of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum: "For the dead and the living, we must bear witness."

WHAT OUR PROGRAM OFFERS THE COMMUNITY:

Each year the Memorial Week Program at Oregon State provides analysis of the Holocaust in its history: the background, the course, and the implications.  A recurrent question that our program seeks to answer is, “How could the Holocaust have happened?”  How, in the twentieth century, in a Europe seemingly quite advanced, could millions of men and women have cooperated in an effort to destroy a people, while so few sought to protect those who were in danger?

From the inception of our program in 1987, we have promoted education on a broad front, not only on campus, but throughout the Corvallis-Albany area and beyond.  When Professor John K. Roth, the noted educator and Holocaust scholar, spoke at OSU in 1994, he commented that this Holocaust Memorial Program had become "nationally known."  Professor Marion Kaplan, who spoke in 1995, volunteered that she knew of no program where she lived -- New York City -- that was as comprehensive or as well integrated as the one at OSU.

The calendar for Holocaust Memorial Week annually provides for 12-15 events, activities, and exhibits – 5-6 on campus, the rest in local schools or elsewhere in the Corvallis area -- and in a typical year 3000-4000 attend one or more events.  Most of the events on campus are filmed, and many of the videos are available at our website (with more to come), so that those who cannot attend have the benefit of them.

Major annual offerings include lectures at OSU by internationally recognized authorities in Holocaust studies or comparative genocide.  Our program also arranges talks on campus and in high schools in Corvallis and vicinity by concentration-camp survivors, liberators, and others who were in some way exposed to the Holocaust. We likewise arrange for age-appropriate events in the middle schools.  The program provides for the screening of films on issues related to the Holocaust and genocide.  Similarly, we sponsor the production of relevant creative works, such as plays and concerts.

In April 2006, for example, we sponsored a series of performances of a Holocaust play, Just One More Dance, at Corvallis High School, and School District 509-J arranged for every middle- and high-school student in our district – 3400 in all – to attend.

While our program focuses on the Holocaust, we also feel an obligation to promote awareness of the general issue of genocide and mass murder, which during the past century has been a recurrent problem, played out in killing campaigns unprecedented in scope.  Since the breadth of the problem is not widely recognized, one day of each Holocaust Memorial Week is set aside for examining, in a variety of events, an episode of genocide or mass murder other than the Holocaust.

Monday, April 21st marks the start of the 38th annual observance of Holocaust Memorial Week at Oregon State University. As in previous years, the program offers a variety of events on topics related to human rights and mass atrocities, with a primary focus on the Holocaust. 

2025 EVENTS:

 

Monday, April 21 | 7 p.m., PRAx, Detrick Hall | In-person event | Reservation Required

“From Holocaust to Hope.” Public Talk by Holocaust Survivor Dr. Irene Butter. Irene Butter was born in Berlin in 1930. Her Jewish family fled to Amsterdam in 1937 to escape Nazi persecution, settling in the same neighborhood as Anne Frank. When the Nazis invaded, Irene’s family was sent to Camp Westerbork and, eventually, Bergen-Belsen, where she briefly reencountered Anne Frank. Irene will discuss her Holocaust and refugee experiences, as well as her current peace work. This event is co-sponsored by Oregon State University’s Center for the Humanities.
 
Dr. Butter is a Professor Emerita of Economics at the University of Michigan and the author of From Holocaust to Hope: Shores Beyond Shores, a memoir. In 2024, Dr. Butter received the German Order of Merit for her work in Holocaust Education. She is co-founder of the Raoul Wallenberg Medal and Lecture Series at the University of Michigan and a founding member of Zeitouna (lemon tree), an Arab/Jewish women’s dialogue group in Ann Arbor.

Pre-event opening remarks at 6:15 p.m. in PRAx Toomey Lobby by Katherine Hubler, editor of Listening to Survivors: Four Decades of Holocaust Memorial Week at Oregon State University (OSU Press).

 

Wednesday, April 23 | 7 p.m., LINC, Room 302 | Register

“Holocaust Memorial Books and the Resurrection of Destroyed Communities.” Presentation by Dr. Eliyana Adler. Holocaust survivors and Jewish organizations created Yizkor books (or yizker bikher) beginning in the 1940s to commemorate Jewish communities destroyed during the war. Focusing on Polish Jewry, a community that faced nearly total annihilation, Dr. Adler’s work highlights the grassroots activism of survivors and the reconstruction of Polish Jewish history and traditions that the Nazis sought to destroy. This event is co-sponsored by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Dr. Adler is a professor of Judaic Studies and History at Binghamton University and the 2024/2025 Alexander Grass Memorial Fellow at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Her most recent book, Survival on the Margins: Polish Jewish Refugees in the Wartime Soviet Union (Harvard University Press), came out in 2020 and won the Yad Vashem International Book Prize for Holocaust Research as well as the Rachel Feldhay Brenner Award in Polish Jewish Studies.


Friday, April 25 | 10 a.m. – 12 p.m. (Pacific Time) |  Remote Only  | Live via Zoom

“Global Challenges to Democracy and Human Rights,” Panel Discussion and Dialogue.

This interdisciplinary panel explores contemporary challenges facing democracy and human rights. In a world shaken by emboldened autocrats, climate change, pandemics, and wars, how can we maintain the confidence in our ability as citizens to change things for the better?

Dr. Philipp Kneis: Introduction & Moderator
Dr. Mark Ward: Neutrality Matters. The Neutrality Principle - Where Did It Come From?
Dr. Janine Ludwig: Hybrid war and Russian disinformation in the West
Dr. Christopher McKnight Nichols: American Isolationism, Unilateralism and the West
Q&A and Dialogue

The panel is organized by Dr. Philipp Kneis (Oregon State University) and Dr. Allison Davis-White Eyes (Fielding Graduate University). It is sponsored by OSU’s School of History, Philosophy, and Religion and OSU’s School of Public Policy, in cooperation with the Fielding Graduate University’s Global Democracy and Human Rights Initiative.

 

Thank you to all of our donors who helped make these events possible:

School of History, Philosophy, and Religion
School of Public Policy
School of Language, Culture, and Society
Center for the Humanities
Honors College
CLA Dean's Office
Provost's Fund for Excellence
Carson Lecture Series
City of Corvallis
Beit Am
School of Writing, Literature, and Film
Office of Institutional Diversity at OSU
United States Memorial Holocaust Museum
Individual donations to the OSU Foundation’s Holocaust Memorial fund