Auschwitz, 70 years Later and the Interpretation of MemorySunday, April 30, 1:00 PM – 2:30 PM

Sunday, April, 30th at 1:00 pm

Speaker Dr. Anna Sommer Schneider, Georgetown University

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How do we understand the many different interpretations and symbolism(s) that Auschwitz assumed? Since its liberation in January 1945 and the creation of the Museum the following year, the memory of this notorious Nazi death camp has often been twisted, distorted or even abused. What remains clear, however, is that the policy of the communist government in Poland regarding Auschwitz, and the narrative created after the war, exerted tremendous impact on the awareness of the post-war generations in Poland and Polish-Jewish relations. Inevitably, the distortions of memory shed light on the lack of awareness and comprehension of the different meanings and symbolism of Auschwitz by the post-World War II generations.

This program is presented in partnership with The Gordon Center for Performing Arts.

Anna Sommer Schneider currently teaches at the Center for Jewish Civilization, Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University in Washington, DC. She received her Ph.D. from the Department of Jewish Studies at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland. She is the author of She’erit Hapletah: Surviving Remnant. The Activities of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee in Poland, 1945-1989, 2014 (published in Polish) and co-author of Rescue, Relief and Renewal: 100 Years of the Joint in Poland, 2014. In 2014 she co-curated an exhibition of the same title.

Dr. Schneider is also the author of numerous scholarly and critical articles on Holocaust memory and the history of the Jews in post-World War II Poland, published both in Polish and English. Her most recent writings include The Survival of ‘Yiddishkeit’: Impact of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee on Jewish Education in Poland, 1945-1989 in Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry, Vol. 30 (forthcoming November, 2017).  She served as a Research Assistant at the Institute for the Study of Modern Israel at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia and has lectured frequently in Poland and America. She also has been serving as a guide and educator at the State Museum of Auschwitz-Birkenau in Oświęcim since 1998.

The public programs for this project were made possible by a grant from Maryland Humanities, through support from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in these programs do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities or Maryland Humanities