Schedule for 2009 Baeumler-Kaplan Holocaust Commemoration

All events are free and open to the public.

• Sunday, April 19 at 7:30 p.m. in Weber Music Hall, the International Film Series presents the film The Counterfeiters.  The film showing is co-sponsored by the Baeumler-Kaplan Holocaust Commemoration Committee. A discussion led by Baeumler-Kaplan committee members will follow.

The Counterfeiters is the true story of the largest counterfeiting operation in history, set up by the Nazis in 1936. Salomon "Solly" Sorowitsch is the king of counterfeiters. He lives a mischievous life of cards, booze, and women in Berlin during the Nazi-era. Suddenly his luck runs dry when arrested by Superintendent Friedrich Herzog. Immediately thrown into the Mauthausen concentration camp, Salomon exhibits exceptional skills there and is soon transferred to the upgraded camp of Sachsenhausen. Upon his arrival, he once again comes face to face with Herzog, who is there on a secret mission. Hand-picked for his unique skill, Salomon and a group of professionals are forced to produce fake foreign currency under the program Operation Bernhard.

• Tuesday, April 21 from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. outside the entrance to the Library, Camp Darfur will be on display. 
  

Camp Darfur is an interactive awareness and education event that brings attention to the ongoing genocide in Darfur, Sudan, and gives individuals the opportunity to discover their own power to make a difference. Camp Darfur raises awareness and examines Sudan’s Darfur region and its humanitarian crisis – genocide. A deeply concerned world community must come together united as one voice to remember the victims of past genocides and to make a call-to-action to end the genocide in Darfur today.

• Tuesday, April 21 at 5:00 p.m. the 2009 Baeumler-Kaplan Holocaust Commemoration presents, Standing Up to the Nazis:  Jews Armed and Spiritual Resistance in the Vilna Ghetto, by Ellen Kennedy.
  

This is the story of the Jews in the Vilna ghetto and their resistance to unimaginable Nazi oppression and brutality.  Resistance means doing something that’s difficult or dangerous to protect oneself or others.  Resistance can be spiritual, cultural, armed and violent, or unarmed and defiant.  Jews used all these techniques of resistance in the face of Nazi and local persecution and terror.  Kennedy will also talk about how this story of the ghetto and the brave acts of resistance call us to action against other situations of mass atrocities today, on this anniversary of the Holocaust.

• Thursday, April 23 at noon in the Library Rotunda, Baeumler-Kaplan committee members Leonore Baeumler and Deborah Petersen-Perlman will make a brown bag presentation entitled History is not Enough: The Symbolic History of Nuremberg
  

Mrs. Baeumler and Dr. Petersen-Perlman will review the ancient history of the city of Nuremberg as a crossroads of European commerce and an imperial city of the Holy Roman Empire.  Using artistic and photographic images (including photos from Baeumler and Petersen-Perlman’s fall 2008 trip to Germany), the presentation will review the Nazis’ idealized view of the city and explore how they made use of its medieval past and recast it for their purposes as a Nazi Center in the 1930s and 1940s.  The Jewish experiences of the city will be woven throughout the presentation from the 13th century to the present.