Invitation

Program
  23th, Saturday
  24th, Sunday
  Speaker Bio's

Related Events

Related Reading

Sponsors

Related Reading

Below are books written on the Holocaust by this year's speakers and presenters. A small number of these books will be available at the conference for purchase.

	Oasis of Dreams Teaching and Learning Peace in a Jewish-Palestinian Village in Israel Grace Feuerverger Neve Shalom/Wahat Al-Salam (the Hebrew and Arabic words for Oasis of Peace) is a community founded by Jews and Palestinians that is aimed at demonstrating the possibilities for living in peace while maintaining their respective cultural heritages and languages. The village schools represent a unique educational experience: an opportunity for Jewish and Palestinian children to learn together in a Hebrew-Arabic blilingual, bicultural, binational setting. This book, a result of the author's eight year study of the schools in the village, explores the psychological and social dimensions of this important educational endeavor.
	Against All Odds Norman Salsitz and Amalie Petranker Salsitz This is an unusually exciting story including hair-breath escapes, dangerous subterfuges, intrigues and heroic exploits shared by two people against an array of Nazi pursuers in Poland. It contains a romantic interlude which culminated in the marriage of the two protagonists. Amalie was so successful in posing as an Aryan that she received a marriage proposal from a German officer. Norman saved himself by trading coffee beans for his life, with a Nazi official. The story of Norman and Amalie (her parents and friends called her Manya) does not end with their fateful encounter in Cracow. Rather, for the two of them it was just the beginning. Love blossomed and before the end of 1945 they were wed. Manya's long heald ambition to become a doctor advanced a step when she was accepted at war's end into medical school (Universytet Jagielonski) in Cracow. However, complete concentration on studies was impossible, given the pressing needs of Jewish survivors who managed to drift into Cracow. Most owned nothing more than the tattered remnants of concentration camp cloths; all were desperate. Defeat the Germans did not result in peace and security for Poland's Jews. Reports circulated of widespread attacks on Jewish survivors by elements in the Polish population. Manya found herself devoting a great deal of energy to providing relief and support for the desperate Jews she encountered everywhere. After the transfer of Norman from Cracow to Wroclaw (Breslau) Manya resigned from medical school. With the Holocaust becoming a subject of immense general interest, the Salsitzes have found themselves sought after for numerous newspaper articles and interviews and have been called upon to speak at an endless array of memorial gatherings honoring the victims of the German reign of terror.
	In A World Gone Mad Amy Hill Hearth, Norman Salsitz, and Amalie Petranker Salsitz In this startlingly honest book, an American writer of Germna-Christian descent describes the evolution of her poignant present-day friendship with a married pair of Jewish survivors of the Holocaust. Along the way, she learns the astonishing details of their story: a fascinating, rare account of avoiding capture and certain death by masquerading as Christians and working for the anti-Nazi Underground in Poland. Amy Hill Hearth offers a touching character study of two unforgettable figures who recognize that their time, and that of all survivors, is running short. A fast-paced story of outwitting the enemy, of false identities and chilling close calls, culminating in the stunning way in which the couple met, In a World Gone Mad is a contemporary look at the Holocaust and its residual effects not only on survivors and their descendants but on all persons of conscience. No small part of this collaborative effort is the compelling evidence that people of different backgrounds and life experiences can begin to see the world in a new, more hopeful light simply by coming to know one another as individuals. It is a story that will be savored by general readers and scholars alike.
	A Jewish Boyhood in Poland Remembering Kolbuszowa Norman Salsitz As told to Richard Skolnik Kolbuszowa is gone now. Before World War II it was a thriving, small Polish town of 4,000 people, half Polish Catholics, half Jews, where family and the traditional ways of life were strong. It was the town where Norman Salsitz was born, in 1920, the last of nine children. It was the town he helped to destroy, forced by the Nazis in 1941 to assist in the brick-by-brick destruction of the Jewish ghetto in which his family lived. Salsitz was later sent to a German work camp, but escaped into the woods to live and later to tell his story of Kolbuszowa to Richard Skolnik. Salsitz speaks to us both as an exceptional witness to everyday events in the town and as a shrewd observer of the broader landscape. Colorful details bring the people, the customs and habits, both religious and secular, back to life. He conveys how painful it often was to be Jewish in Poland even before the war. Despite the persecution, he evokes the dignity and strength of the Jewish way of life among the peasant and professional classes alike. This memoir is also a vivid portrait of childhood and adolescence. Engaging if not always well-behaved, Salsitz was an entrepreneur from an early age. Among his many business ventures was the planting of peach trees to have fruit to sell. His youthful dreams ended abruptly, forever, with the arrival of the German troops. He was never to taste the fruit of his own trees.