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Holocaust Remembrance Week at W&L is April 27-May 1

Washington and Lee University’s Hillel presents Holocaust Remembrance Week from April 27 – May 1. The planned activities range from films to a vigil to a talk by Holocaust survivor, George Salton. All of the Holocaust Remembrance Week activities are open to the public without charge.

George Salton, the survivor of 10 concentrations camps, will talk about his experiences on Thursday, April 30, at 5 p.m. in the Stackhouse Theater in Elrod Commons. Salton is witness to the murder of hundreds of innocent people and the only one in his Polish-born family to survive the Holocaust. He is the author The 23rd Psalm: A Holocaust Memoir.

The complete activities at Washington and Lee during Hillel’s Holocaust Remembrance Week are:

Monday, April 27

  • 7 p.m., film: Defiance in Stackhouse Theater, Elrod Commons

    Defiance is based on the true story of a group of Jews in Belarus who successfully defied the Nazis, hid in the forest and maintained a self-contained society while losing only about 50 of their some 1,200 members. The “Bielski Partisans” represented the war’s largest and most successful group of Jewish resisters, although when filmmakers arrived on the actual locations to film the story, they found no local memory of their activities, and, for many reasons, hardly any Jews. Edward Zwick’s film shows how they survived, governed themselves and faced ethical questions.

Tuesday, April 28

  • 5-6 p.m., a vigil to remember the six million: students, faculty and staff will take turns reading the names of Holocaust victims, Cohen Amphitheater.
  • 7 p.m., film: Defiance in Stackhouse Theater, Elrod Commons.

Wednesday, April 29

  • 7 p.m., film: Schindler’s List in Stackhouse Theater, Elrod Commons.

    Schindler’s List is an American 1993 biographical film about Oskar Schindler, a German businessman who saved the lives of more than a thousand Polish Jews during the Holocaust by employing them in his factories. The film was directed by Steven Spielberg and based on the novel Schindler’s Ark by Thomas Keneally. It stars Liam Neeson as Schindler, Ralph Fiennes as Schutzstaffel (SS) officer Amon Göth, and Ben Kingsley as Schindler’s accountant Itzhak Stern.

    The film was both a box office success and recipient of seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Original Score. In 2007, the American Film Institute ranked the film eighth on its list of the 100 best American films of all time.

Thursday, April 30

  • 5 p.m., talk by George Salton, Holocaust survivor, Stackhouse Theater.
  • 10 p.m., film: Schindler’s List in Stackhouse Theater, Elrod Commons.

Friday, May 1

  • 6 p.m., Yom HaShoah Service in Elrod Commons, room 345, led by W&L Dean Hank Dobin; dinner to follow in Elrod Commons, room 116.
  • 10 p.m., film: Schindler’s List in Stackhouse Theater, Elrod Commons.