An Evening with Holocaust Survivor Gerda Weissmann Klein

The Cohen Center announces that Gerda Weismann Klein - survivor, author, and scholar - will present the 12th Annual Holocaust Memorial Lecture on Monday, September 121, 2009.

Gerda Weissmann's life changed forever in 1939 when, during her fifteenth year, German troops invaded her home in Beilsko, Poland. Both Gerda and her brother Arthur were separated from their parents and sent to slave-labor camps. The horror of that day remained forever ingrained in Gerda's memory - it was the last time she would ever see her family. Never losing hope, Gerda's resilience supported her through three successive years in slave-labor camps and a 350-mile forced death-march in which 2,000 women were subjected to exposure, starvation, and arbitrary execution. Throughout, Gerda never lost the will to survive.

In 1945, she is rescued at the point of starvation by her future husband, Kurt Kelin, and American intelligence officer. Gerda Weissmann's account of living through the Holocaust is documented in her autobiography, All But My Life and in the film, One Survivor Remembers (available from the Cohen Center).

12th Holocaust Memorial Lecture
Monday, September 21, 2009
7:30 p.m.
Mabel Brown Room, Young Student Center, Keene State College

For more information contact:

Tom White
Coordinator of Educational Outreach
CCHS
www.keene.edu/cchs

Image courtesy of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Great Social Studies Speakers from the Vermont Humanities Council

From Peter Gilbert, Executive Director of the Vermont Humanities Council:

Professor Woden Teachout will be speaking as part of the Vermont Humanities Council’s First Wednesdays program -- about how the American flag has been used by diverse groups through American history to promote support for their cause – including, for example, nativist and segregation groups on the one hand, and the civil rights movement on the other. She will be speaking at 7 pm on December 2nd at the library in Newport.

NOTE Also the other social studies/history distinguished speakers that will be part of First Wednesdays, a monthly series of free public talks offered on the first Wednesday of every month from October through May – in NINE Vermont towns – Brattleboro, Burlington, Manchester, Middlebury, Montpelier, Newport, Norwich, Rutland, and St. Johnsbury. (click on the link to get a complete listing of events) Other speakers include:

• Ken Burns on National Parks, an American idea;
• Pre-eminent civic engagement scholar, Harvard’s Robert Putnam (Bowling Alone) examines disconcerting new evidence showing that community bonds can be weakened by ethnic diversity and considers how we can overcome those challenges to realize diversity’s benefits.
• Middebury College President Emeritus and historian John McCardell on Lincoln and the Causes of the Civil War
• NY Times’s Chief Washington correspondent David Sanger on the world Obama confronts and the Challenges to American power
• “Don’t Know Much about History” author Kenneth Davis on hidden history.
• Alistair Cooke’s daughter Susan Cooke Kittredge talks about the Unseen Alistair Cooke
• George Dennis O’Brien, former president of Bucknell and U. of Rochester, on the legendary grunge band Nirvana and Kurt Cobain, which offers insight into the world of rock, its promise, and its dangers.
• Retired NBC correspondent Robert Hager talks about 40 years of covering disasters, including the Munich Olympics massacre, the Islamic revolution in Iran, OK City, space shuttle disasters, 9/11, and more.
• Historian Allen Koop on NH’s only WWII POW camp and the inspiring story of how ordinary people in Stark, NH turned bitter division into camaraderie
• Former Iranian Ambassador to the UN Mansour Farhang on Iran
• Pulitzer-Prize winner Thomas Powers on “It’s all Uphill in Afghanistan”
• Retired CIA Chief of Counterterrorism considers problem-resolving in the Middle East and South Asia
• Middle East expert Gordon Robison considers whether Obama’s policies toward the Middle East differ from his predecessor’s
• VT Folklife Center founder Jane Beck on Vermont oral history gems
• Dartmouth art historian Jane Carroll on how images of leaders in art can be used to create myths more powerful than reality
• UVM Professor Frank Bryan compares New England Town Meetings with Congress
  Bryan will also consider why no president since 1952 has been ranked as great by presidential scholars.
• VT State Curator David Schutz on Vt’s State House at 150 years old
• Pre-eminent Native American history scholar Colin Calloway on 1763 and how a war of independence waged by Indian people set America on course for a second, more famous war of independence.
• Bill “Spaceman” Lee recounts his adventures in major league baseball
• Banned literature, Professor Elaine Razzano considers the reasons why books are banned, and more
• Dartmouth’s Annelise Orleck reflects on the 1911 fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in Greenwich Village, which killed 146 workers, mostly young immigrant Jewish and Italian women.
• Dartmouth English professor Tom Luxon explores how John Milton’s redefinition of marriage unintentionally charted a path toward making same-sex marriages imaginable.
  Historian Allen Koop explores the history, traditions of the Appalachian Mt Club’s Hut System in NH
• Middlebury’s Susan Watson explores the nearly mythical influence of Einstein on the twentieth century.
• Amherst College professor Ilan Stavans on the impact that immigrants have had on American culture and language and the role immigrant writers have played in your national consciousness.
• Dartmouth professor Irene Kacandes on the enduring appeal of Anne Frank and her diary.
  Author and illustrator David Macaulay traces the development of his books.

2010 Census: It's About Us

From Thomas L. Mesenbourg, Acting Census Director:

Preparations for the 2010 Decennial Census are accelerating. The census counts everyone residing in the United States – in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, and American Samoa. These counts determine the reapportionment of Congressional seats and the allocation of significant resources, including over $300 billion per year in federal and state funding allocated to communities for schools, Title 1 programs, special education, neighborhood improvements, public health, and other programs and services.

The U.S. Census has developed a program of lessons and resources titled the 2010 Census: It’s About Us. The materials explain the operation and importance of an accurate census, showing students that the census is integral to many fundamental concepts of our democracy, including the Constitution, history, congress, our government, and public service.