Holocaust Scholar to Speak on Catholic-Jewish Relations

Noted Holocaust scholar and author Alan Berger will deliver the first talk in the new Jewish Studies Lecture Series at Ithaca College. Berger’s presentation, "c," is scheduled for Monday, March 26, at 7:30 p.m. in the Emerson Suites, Phillips Hall. It is free and open to the public.

Berger holds the Raddock Eminent Scholar Chair of Holocaust Studies and is the director of the Center for the Study of Values and Violence after Auschwitz at Florida Atlantic University. His books include Crisis and Covenant: The Holocaust in American Jewish Fiction and Children of Job: Second-Generation Witnesses to the Holocaust. He was the editor of Judaism in the Modern World and Bearing Witness to the Holocaust: 1939--1989.

"Relations between two great faith traditions --- Catholicism and Judaism --- continue to be strained in the aftermath of the Holocaust," says Berger. "Especially when it comes to Auschwitz, each community has its own interpretation of that site’s historical meaning and how it should be treated today."

Berger has twice served as chair of the annual Scholars’ Conference on the Church Struggle and the Holocaust. He is currently a member of the Academic Council of the Institute of the International Conference on the Holocaust and Genocide and is associate director of the Association for the Study of Jewish-American and Holocaust Literature. At Florida Atlantic University he directs the undergraduate program in Holocaust and Judaic studies. He previously founded and directed the Jewish studies program at Syracuse University.

The lecture is sponsored by the Office of the Provost and the Jewish studies program.