Speakers
Sunday, April 12th beginning at 1:30 PM • Krannert Auditorium, Purdue University
Michael Meng
2015 Rabbi Gedalyah Engel Lecturer
Professor of History at Clemson University
Biography
Michael Meng is a historian of modern European history with specialties in German, Jewish, Polish, urban, and intellectual history. His first book, Shattered Spaces: Encountering Jewish Ruins in Postwar Germany and Poland (Harvard, 2011), explores the history of Jewish sites in the urban landscape from 1945 to the present. The book won the Hans Rosenberg Prize (Central European History Society) and the Laura Shannon Prize (Notre Dame). It was a finalist for the Yad Vashem International Prize and the Fraenkel Prize in Contemporary History (Wiener Library London). The dissertation upon which the book is based won the Fritz Stern Prize (GHI-Washington) and the Linda Dykstra Distinguished Dissertation in the Humanities and Fine Arts (UNC-Chapel Hill).
He is currently working on several projects, including an intellectual history of Nazi apocalypticism and its ruination after 1945 and a book on the cultural, linguistic, and intellectual afterlife of the Frankfurt ghetto (Judengasse) since the late eighteenth century.
Layered Memories in Postwar Warsaw: Muranów as a Ruin
In 1945, Warsaw's prewar Jewish district, Muranów, lay in ruins. Almost no physical sites of Warsaw's once rich Jewish history remained standing after the Holocaust. How have the residents of Warsaw –– mostly non-Jews –– dealt with the memories of this obliterated and ruined space? Prof. Meng discusses from 1945 to the present several important attempts among largely non-Jewish Poles to remember and reflect upon the history of Warsaw's Jewish past in the district of Muranów.
Additional Reading
Shattered Spaces: Encountering Jewish Ruins in Postwar Germany and Poland
ISBN: 9780674053038
Publisher: Harvard University Press
View summary and and purchase reading at Harvard University Press
Norm Conard
Director of the Irena Sendler Project and the Lowell Milken Center
Biography
Norm Conard is an Educator and the Director of the Irena Sendler Project and the Lowell Milken Center, Ft. Scott, Kansas. He taught high school history for over 30 years and is known internationally for his development of projects that teach respect and understanding among all people and for innovation in project-based learning. Norm has received local, state and national recognition for his work, including the Milken Educator Award in 1992. He has been state Kansas Teacher of the Year, National Secondary Social Studies Outstanding Teacher, USA Today All-American teacher, Nationally Board Certified educator, a member of the National Hall of Fame, and 2012 Kansan of the Year. Mr. Conard retired from classroom teaching in 2007 to become Executive Director of the Lowell Milken Center for Unsung Heroes.
Milken Center Website
Norm Conard was named the 2012 Kansan of the Year
Jack Mayer
Author, Life in a Jar
Biography
Jack Mayer is a pediatric physician who has written short stories, poems, and essays about his years in pediatric practice and hiking the Long Trail in Vermont. He began practicing pediatrics in 1976 in Enosburg Falls, Vermont. From 1987 – 1991 Dr. Mayer was a National Cancer Institute Epidemiology Fellow at Columbia University School of Public Health in New York City, researching the molecular biology of childhood cancer. He was also a pediatrician with Columbia’s General Pediatric Group Practice. Dr. Mayer established Rainbow Pediatrics in Middlebury, VT, where he continues to practice primary care pediatrics. He is an Instructor in Pediatrics at the University of Vermont School of Medicine and a J-term adjunct faculty for Middlebury College pre-med students. He is the author of Life in a Jar.
Author's Bio, Long Trail Press Website
Life in a Jar/The Irena Sendler Story
The Irena Sendler Project: In 1999, while searching for a National History Day topic, three of Norm Conard’s students in rural Kansas discovered a Polish Catholic woman who had saved Jewish children in Warsaw during WWII. Few had heard of Irena Sendlerowa in 1999. Now, after 350 presentations of Life in a Jar, a website with huge usage and world-wide media attention, a motion picture and award winning book (Life in a Jar/the Irena Sendler Project), Irena is known to the world. Norm Conard and Jack Mayer will discuss the “discovery” of Irena Sendler by Norm’s students, the research for and publication of the book Life in a Jar, and the impact of the Life in a Jar Project on education in Poland.
Additional Reading
Life in a Jar: The Irena Sendler Project
ISBN: 098411131X
Publisher: Long Trail Press
View summary and purchase reading at Long Trail Press
Facebook Page
The Irena Sendler Project
Danny Spungen
Philanthropist and Foundation Trustee
Biography
In 2007, Danny Spungen, a collector and philatelist, on behalf of the foundation, acquired arguably one of the best known collections of Holocaust materials related to stamps, covers, postcards, letters, bank note forgeries, and manuscripts from concentration camps and Jewish ghettos. Formally known as "The NAZI Scourge: Postal Evidence of the Holocaust and the Devastation of Europe," the award winning exhibit is being made available to the public on the Foundation's web site.
The NAZI Scourge: Postal Evidence of the Holocaust and the Devastation of Europe
The Florence and Laurence Spungen Family Foundation