YSU sponsors lecture, exhibit on Holocaust

Staff report

YOUNGSTOWN

A lecture by an expert in American Jewish history and an exhibit focusing on a local Holocaust survivor are being sponsored by Youngstown State University’s Center for Judaic and Holocaust Studies.

Hasia Diner, the Paul and Sylvia Steinberg Professor of American Jewish History at New York University, will give the lecture “We Remember with Reverence and Love: American Jews and the Myth of Silence After the Holocaust” at 7:30 p.m. April 1 in the President’s Suite at Kilcawley Center. The free lecture, open to the public, is sponsored by the center for Judaic and Holocaust Studies.

Diner is the director of the Goldstein Goren Center for American Jewish History.

A specialist in immigration and ethnic history, American Jewish history and the history of American women, she is the author of numerous published books, including “In the Almost Promised Land: American Jews and Blacks, 1915-1935,” “Erin’s Daughters in America: Irish Immigrant Women in the Nineteenth Century,” “A Time for Gathering: The Second Migration, 1820-1880,” “Lower East Side Memories: The Jewish Place in America,” “Hungering for America: Italian, Irish and Jewish Foodways in the Age of Migration,” “The Jews of the United States: 1654-2000” and most recently, “We Remember with Reverence and Love: American Jews and the Myth of Silence After the Holocaust, 1945-1962,” which won the 2010 National Jewish Book Award in the category of American Jewish Studies.

Also, an exhibition titled “The Boy from Apsa: The Life of Bill Vegh” runs April 1 through 14 in the Youngstown Historical Center of Industry and Labor in Youngstown. An opening reception, open to the public, is scheduled for 5:30 p.m. April 2.

Holocaust survivor Bill Vegh came to Youngstown after surviving the horrors of Auschwitz and other Nazi concentration camps. In his later years, he became a Holocaust educator, telling his story to children around the Mahoning Valley. Vegh’s story has been transformed into a multimedia exhibition including images and a film.

The exhibition and film were created by the Youngstown Area Jewish Community Relations Council. The research and text of the exhibition was conducted and created by Helene J. Sinnreich, director of the center for Judaic and Holocaust Studies. The exhibition construction was funded through the generosity of the Thomases Family Endowment of the Youngstown Area Jewish Federation.