W&L Hillel Presents Holocaust Remembrance Week Activities
Washington and Lee University’s Hillel presents Holocaust Remembrance Week from April 28 – May 2. The planned activities range from films to a vigil to a talk by a Holocaust survivor, the grandmother of a current W&L student.
All of the Holocaust Remembrance Week activities are open to the public without charge.
Judith Hruza, a retired physician and survivor of the Holocaust, will give a talk on Thursday, May 1, at 4:30 p.m. in the Stackhouse Theater in W&L’s Elrod Commons. The topic of her talk will be about her experiences during the death march from Budapest to Austria, at the end of 1944, and her liberation. The death march forced out most of the Jews who were living in Hungary at that time. Hruza is the grandmother of senior Audrey Horn.
Born on the border between Czechoslovakia and Hungary, she was in Budapest to attend high school when Jews were forced to march on foot to camps in Austria. Dr. Hruza decided on a life in medicine because of a physician she met on the death march. She attended medical school in Prague and in 1966 escaped from Czechoslovakia to Sweden then on to the United States in 1970.
The activities at Washington and Lee during Hillel’s Holocaust Remembrance Week are:
- Monday, April 28
- 7 p.m., Stackhouse Theater, Elrod Commons, film: “Everything is Illuminated.” Jonathan (Elijah Wood, post-Frodo Baggins) is a collector. He obsessively catalogs items pertaining to his family, then pins them to his bedroom wall. When he is given a photo taken in 1940s Ukraine of his grandfather with the mysterious woman, Augusta, his curiosity is piqued. So he travels to the Ukraine and begins a road trip into his past.
- Tuesday, April 29
- 4:30 p.m., in front of Lee Chapel: Vigil Against Oppression. Take a stand against oppression in its many forms. The vigil will feature poetry, readings, a moment of silence, candles and music. Led by Burr Datz, coordinator of Religious Life. Co-sponsored by Hillel, the Multifaith Council and the Office of Religious Life (rain site: inside Lee Chapel).
- 9:30 p.m., film: “The Devil Came on Horseback.” An up-close, honest and uncompromising look at the crisis in Darfur. The film exposes this on-going tragedy as seen through the eyes of one American witness.
- Wednesday, April 30
- 7 p.m., film: “Everything is Illuminated.”
- Thursday, May 1
- 4:30 p.m., Stackhouse Theater: Talk by Dr. Judith Hruza, Holocaust survivor.
- 9:30 p.m., film: “The Devil Came on Horseback.”
- Friday, May 2
- All day, Elrod Commons Living Room: Names Projection to remember the six million.
- 6:30 p.m., Elrod Commons room 345: Yom Ha Shoah Service, led by W&L Dean Hank Dobin.
- 10 p.m., film: “Everything is Illuminated.”
All films will be in the Stackhouse Theater in Elrod Commons.
