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CORVALLIS - Oregon State University, in association with the City of Corvallis and School District 509-J, will observe Holocaust Week April 19-24, with a series of lectures, films and other events that are free and open to the public.

The OSU community has sponsored programs in observance of Holocaust Memorial Week since 1987, said Paul Kopperman, OSU professor of history and chair of the Holocaust Memorial Committee.

"Our observances are in keeping with the university's stated goal of combating prejudice," Kopperman said. "This program is actuated by a belief that educational institutions can do much to counter bigotry and to foster respect for diversity by promoting an awareness of the Holocaust, perhaps the most horrific historical indicator of what price hatred can exact."

The memorial week program regularly includes public lectures at OSU by internationally acclaimed scholars in Holocaust studies, Kopperman said.

But some of the most important work takes place off-campus, he pointed out.

"In area high schools in Corvallis, Albany, Philomath, Lebanon and elsewhere, survivors of concentration camps speak to students about what they experienced, saw, and learned during the Holocaust," Kopperman said. "There are also age-appropriate events in the middle schools."

Holocaust memorial week events this year include:

Sunday, April 19

• "7:30 p.m.:

  The Landscape of Memory: Holocaust Memorials in History," a presentation by James E. Young, professor of English and Judaic studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Aided by slides and a film clip, Young explores Holocaust memory as reflected in the memorials and museums in Europe, Israel, and America. He will also discuss how national self-idealization, political considerations, and aesthetic concerns affect public memory and memorialization. OSU's LaSells Stewart Center.

Monday, April 20

• Noon:

  Recital of Kaddish (a mourner's prayer) for the six million people killed in the Holocaust. OSU Memorial Union Lounge.

   

• 3:30 p.m.:

  The first local screening of "To Speak the Unspeakable: The Message of Elie Wiesel." Wiesel, a Nobel Laureate whose memoir, "Night," is the best known of all the survivor accounts of the camps, is the subject of this feature-length documentary. State Theater, 219 S.W. 3rd St., Corvallis.

Tuesday, April 21

• Noon:

  Recital of Kaddish (a mourner's prayer) for the six million people killed in the Holocaust. OSU Memorial Union Lounge.

   

• 7:30 p.m.:

  Public lecture by Leslie and Eva Aigner: "Recalling the Horror." Leslie Aigner, a Czech by birth, moved to Budapest in 1943. In July 1944, he and two younger siblings were taken by cattle car to Auschwitz. He was later transferred to Dachau, where he was liberated in April 1945. His wife, Eva, was born in Budapest and experienced the wartime horror there. On one occasion, she and many other Jews were forced at gunpoint to march to the Danube, in the center of the city. At the last moment, she was allowed to leave. The rest were massacred. LaSells Stewart Center.

Wednesday, April 22

• Noon:

  Recital of Kaddish (a mourner's prayer) for the six million people killed in the Holocaust. OSU Memorial Union Lounge.

• 7:30 p.m.:

  "Fritz Graebe and the Spirit of Rescue," a lecture by Douglas K. Huneke, minister of the Westminster Presbyterian Church in Tiburon, Calif. Herman "Fritz" Graebe was a German engineer who, in 1942, while serving as manager for a corporate office in the Ukraine, saved about 100 Jewish employees at Rovno. Graebe had to face down a major who stood over the Jews, whip in hand, and screamed that they, too, must die. Huneke will analyze the moral and ethical code that prompted Graebe and other altruists to risk their lives to protect Jews. LaSells Stewart Center.

Thursday, April 23

• Noon:

  Recital of Kaddish (a mourner's prayer) for the six million people killed in the Holocaust. OSU Memorial Union Lounge.

   

• 7:30 p.m.:

  "Racial Hygiene: Medicine under the Nazis," is the topic of a talk by Robert Proctor, professor of the history of science at Pennsylvania State University. During World War II, there was a series of grotesque experiments on inmates at the concentration camps. Proctor will discuss how the racial hygiene doctrine took over the medical and scientific community. LaSells Stewart Center.

Friday, April 24

• Noon:

  Recital of Kaddish (a mourner's prayer) for the six million people killed in the Holocaust. OSU Memorial Union Lounge.

Editor's Note:

Photographs of Young, Proctor and Huneke are available. Contact Ute Vergin, 541-737-0785 for details.