HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL PROGRAM
Oregon State University Holocaust Memorial Program
remember the past · change the future
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.
Upcoming Events
Monday, April 13 marks the start of the 39th 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.2026 EVENTS:
Monday, April 13 | 4 p.m. | Milam, Room 319 In-Person Registration Zoom
Round Table Discussion, “Teaching the Holocaust”
Following Oregon’s 2019 mandate requiring Holocaust education in public schools, this roundtable invites current and former teachers—as well as anyone interested—to discuss how the subject is taught and its value for students. The conversation will be led by Ruth Finkel Wade, an experienced Holocaust educator. Deeply shaped by her father, Holocaust survivor Sidney “Sevek” Finkel, Wade has built her own distinguished career in Holocaust education as co-editor and contributor to the award-winning anthology The Ones Who Remember: Second-Generation Voices of Holocaust and as a docent and speaker at the Florida Holocaust Museum.
Holocaust Survivor Talk: Ruth Finkel Wade and Sidney Finkel, “Sevek and the Holocaust: The Boy Who Refused to Die”
Sevek Finkelstein was born in 1931 in Łódź, Poland, and survived the Holocaust after enduring years in a ghetto, multiple concentration camps including Buchenwald, and brutal death marches that claimed most of his immediate family. Despite profound loss, he later dedicated his life to education and reconciliation, speaking at hundreds of schools, and authoring the memoir Sevek and the Holocaust: The Boy Who Refused to Die. His memoir and outreach emphasize healing and unity beyond national or religious identity. Although he will not attend in person due to his age and health, his daughter, Holocaust educator Ruth Finkel Wade, will deliver an account of his testimony, followed by a live Q&A (conducted via Zoom) with Sidney “Sevek” Finkel from his Tucson apartment.
Tuesday, April 14 | 7 p.m. | LPSC 125 Register
Scholarly Talk: Dr. David Lewis, “Manifest Destiny Battles Tribal Occupation: Oregon's Legacy of Genocide”
In the 1850s, settler aggression against Tribes became extreme, leading to violence toward Indigenous peoples in most regions of the territory. Oregon's gold rush and settler push into tribally owned lands caused numerous conflicts. When Governor Curry turned his volunteer militias loose on peaceful Tribes, Indian agents saw that the only way to save the Tribes from extermination was in removal. David G. Lewis, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Anthropology and Indigenous Studies at Oregon State University and author of Tribal Histories of the Willamette Valley (Ooligan Press).
Thursday, April 16 | 4 p.m. | Online Register
Academic panel, “Soft power, human rights and public diplomacy in East Asia.”
This panel of scholars explores soft power, human rights and public diplomacy, focusing on Japan, Korea, and Taiwan. Professor Tsuyoshi Kawasaki (Professor, Political Science, Simon Fraser University) will reflect on soft power, liberal-democratic values, and Japan’s international influence. Professor Dal Yong Jin (SFU Distinguished Professor, Communication, Simon Fraser University) will discuss the New Korean Wave, 2008-present. Professor Chiaoning Su (Associate Professor, Communication, Oakland University) will examine Taiwan’s growing soft power through foreign media coverage. To conclude, Professor Hsin-Huang Michael Hsiao (Chair, Taiwan-Asia Exchange Foundation) will examine Japan, Korea, and Taiwan in a comparative perspective.
Professor of History Hung-Yok Ip (Oregon State University) coordinated this event, which is co-sponsored by the Holocaust Memorial Program and the Chiu Program for Taiwan Studies.
Thursday, April 16 | 7 p.m. | LINC 302 Register
Scholarly Talk: Dr. Wolf Gruner, “How Ordinary Jews fought Persecution in Hitler’s Germany”
Jewish resistance during the Holocaust is still mostly understood in terms of rare armed group activities in the Nazi occupied East. This research is based on a new and broader definition, which includes individual acts, and a large set of new sources, ranging from police and court records to survivor testimonies. Introducing five categories of individual resistance, the presentation demonstrates how between 1933 and 1945 hundreds of Jews resisted persecution in a wide variety of ways in Nazi Germany and annexed Austria. The fact that so many German Jewish women and men of all ages, educations, and professions resisted obliterates the common view of Jewish passivity under Nazi persecution. Professor Wolf Gruner serves as the Shapell-Guerin Chair in Jewish Studies and is a Professor of History at University of Southern California in Los Angeles. He also founded and directs the USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research. His latest book, Resisters: How Ordinary Jews Fought Hitler’s Persecution, was named a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award and the Yad Vashem International Book Prize.
Tuesday, April 21 | 7 p.m. | LPSC 125 Register
Scholarly Talk: Dr. Marc Carpenter, “Pioneer Genocides, Settler Celebrations, and Historical Silences in 1800s Oregon”
Across the 1850s Pacific Northwest, American invaders hungry for land committed a host of atrocities, including multiple acts of genocide. Within a generation, pioneers and the historians who loved them covered up most of the crimes that had made Illahee into Oregon and Washington—but hidden evidence from the archives, Euro-American upstanders, and Native witnesses have kept enough stories alive to see the outlines of the horror. Professor Carpenter is an associate professor at the University of Jamestown in North Dakota and the author of The War on Illahee: Genocide, Complicity, and Cover-Ups in the Pioneer Northwest (Yale University Press).