19 minute read
Holocaust and Genocide Awareness Committee Events
from Haverim Fall 2022
by nucssh
BY SIMON RABINOVITCH
In the fall of 2021, the Holocaust and Genocide Awareness Committee co-sponsored, as part of the Myra Kraft Open Classroom, a program on “Plunder, Reparations, and Historical Justice,” which featured Menachem Kaiser, author of the book Plunder: A Memoir of Family Property and Nazi Treasure, in conversation with University Distinguished Professor of Law Margaret Burnham, the Director of the Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project. Mr. Kaiser explained the motivations behind his efforts to seek restitution of property owned by his family in Poland before the Holocaust and had a lively discussion with Professor Burnham about philosophical questions relating to the purpose of restitution and how or whether restorative justice is something that can be achieved.
The Holocaust and Genocide Awareness Committee has long relied on the generosity of the Giessen and Morton families in sponsoring what is the keynote lecture of our annual Holocaust and Genocide Awareness Week, the Robert Salomon Morton Lecture, which showcases a prominent scholar or public figure working in the fields of antisemitism research, Holocaust history, or genocide prevention. This year we expanded the Morton program into a lecture series, featuring the work of three prominent historians doing important work on antisemitism and historical memory.
The first lecture was by Jeffrey Veidlinger, Joseph Brodsky Collegiate Professor of History and Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan, who talked about his new book, In the Midst of Civilized Europe: The Pogroms of 1918-1921 and the Onset of the Holocaust. Professor Veidlinger gave his lecture on February 28, just four days after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and was able to explain not only how anti-Jewish violence during Ukraine and Russia’s civil war operated as a precursor to the Holocaust, but also led a broader discussion of how much Ukraine has changed in the decades since the end of the Soviet Union.
The second Morton Lecture for 2022 was by Charles Gallagher, Professor of History at Boston College, who spoke about his new book, Nazis of Copley Square: The Forgotten History of the Christian Front, 1939-1945. Professor Gallagher told the story of how Catholic theology fueled both antisemitic violence and a Nazi spy ring in Boston during the years of World War II and the Holocaust, and he did so from the perspective of both a historian and a Catholic priest (see page 9).
Our final Morton Lecture, held during Holocaust and Genocide Awareness week, featured Jan Grabowski, Professor of History at the University of Ottawa and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. Professor Grabowski spoke about the dangers of a new form of Holocaust distortion spreading through Eastern Europe, where countries admit the Holocaust happened, but deny and repress evidence of complicity in the event. Professor Grabowski discussed his own first-hand experience of facing legal action in Poland for his research and publishing (see page 11).
MENACHEM KAISER AND MARGARET BURNHAM
SIMON RABINOVITCH, LORI LEFKOVITZ, MENACHEM KAISER, MARGARET BURNHAM, UTA POIGER, TED LANDSMARK, JONATHAN KAUFMAN
Each of these fascinating Morton Lectures dealt with an aspect of how the Holocaust is remembered, not remembered, or distorted to meet specific political or national ends; the corrective work these scholars shared left our community enriched and better informed about the challenges of sustaining an accurate history of the events of the Holocaust. The programming of Holocaust and Genocide Awareness Week in 2022 similarly highlighted questions of memory and justice. One of the highlights of each Holocaust and Genocide Awareness Week is the exposition of student work through a presentation by the Gideon Klein Scholar, a student selected to receive a scholarship supporting their work on music and the arts and the Holocaust. Zachary Richmond, a graduating senior in the Music Industry Program in the College of Arts, Media, and Design, gave a gripping presentation and performance called “Syncopating Freedom: The Third Reich’s Use of Jazz as Propaganda,” in which he walked the audience through instances when the Nazis appropriated and distorted the work of jazz musicians for their own propaganda. His presentation featured the performance of the original works live with his own band. The Holocaust and Genocide Awareness Committee is thrilled to announce that the continuation of the Gideon Klein Scholarship has been secured by a new and generous endowment established through a gift of the Holocaust Legacy Foundation, founded by Todd Ruderman and Jody Kipnis.
(continued on page 8)
RICHMOND’S PRESENTATION FEATURED THE PERFORMANCE OF THE ORIGINAL WORKS LIVE WITH HIS OWN BAND.
PHILIP N. BACKSTROM JR. SURVIVOR LECTURE
FEATURING
DR. AGNES KAPOSI, MBE, RFEng
ADVOCATE FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE, ANTI-PREJUDICE AND EQUALITY
Dr. Kaposi is a Hungarian-born British engineer, educator and author. In 2020, she published her autobiography Yellow Star-Red Star about her life as a child in Hungary before and during the Second World War and under Communist rule, and her subsequent escape to Britain. She earned her PhD in Computer Aided Design and led the electrical engineering department at what is now London South Bank University and consulted in engineering around the world. She became the third woman in UK history to have been elected as Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering. In 2021, Queen Elizabeth awarded her the honor of Member of the British Empire for her work in Holocaust education.
APRIL 5, 2022
NOON EDT • ONLINE
FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC. For more information about this, and other 2022 Holocaust and Genocide Awareness Committee events, please visit bit.ly/HAGAW2022.
REGISTRATION REQUIRED
Presented by the Holocaust and Genocide Awareness Committee, the Jewish Studies Program, and the Humanities Center.
Register Here!
Wednesday, April 6, 2022 10:30 a.m. ET Armenian Heritage Park, Rose Kennedy Greenway, Boston
Join us for a guided visit to the Armenian Heritage Park, a memorial to the Armenian Genocide. We will meet at the Sculpture. The visit will be guided by Barbara Tellalian and Don Tellalian, the architects of the Armenian Heritage Park.
The link to the Heritage Park is here.
Agnes Kaposi delivered the 2022 Philip N. Backstrom Jr. Survivor Lecture virtually from London. Dr. Kaposi spoke about her childhood in Hungary, how she survived the Holocaust there, her reasons for immigrating to the United Kingdom from communist Hungary, and the problems with Holocaust memory in Hungary today. Dr. Kaposi is very prominent in the UK, both as an engineer and a Holocaust educator; she was only the third woman elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, and in 2021 Queen Elizabeth II awarded her the honor of Member of the British Empire for her work in Holocaust education. In a first for Holocaust and Genocide Awareness Week, we also featured a “Third Generation Student Presentation,” as Northeastern student Randall Evers spoke about his late grandfather George, and we listened to a recording of George Evers telling his story of survival in and after Auschwitz.
Finally, Northeastern’s Holocaust and Genocide Awareness Committee has worked to expand its mission to commemorate and understand all forms of genocide. Students and faculty were led on a guided visit to the Armenian Heritage Park, a memorial to the Armenian Genocide on the Greenway, and were introduced to the park and memorial by its architects, Barbara and Don Tellalian. Students and faculty also learned in a lunch seminar from Nicole Fox, the author of After Genocide: Memory and Reconciliation in Rwanda, about her experiences on the ground in Rwanda as a scholar documenting ordinary Rwandans’ efforts to memorialize genocide.
The importance of the Holocaust and Genocide Awareness Committee’s work seems only more urgent each year, as members of the generation who experienced or bore witness to the Holocaust leave us, and humans continue to demonstrate their capacity for hate and violence. As committee chair, I continue to feel particular pride in our students’ engagement in Holocaust education and their energy and commitment to study, learning, and memorialization. With all the difficulties our world faces, we can take a measure of solace from the seriousness, compassion, and intellect of the next generation.
Simon Rabinovitch is Stotsky Professor of Jewish Historical and Cultural Studies
Video recordings of all of these events may be found on the Humanities Center website, and will be permanently archived at the Northeastern Library’s Holocaust Awareness Archive.
ROBERT SALOMON MORTON LECTURE SERIES:
CHARLES GALLAGHER
BY LAUREL LEFF
Before the Proud Boys, there was the Christian Front. In January 1940, the U.S. government charged 17 members of the antisemitic and anticommunist Catholic organization with seditious conspiracy – the same charge, seeking to overthrow the U.S. government, currently facing the Proud Boys. Five months later, in June 1940, a jury acquitted all 17 men and seemingly relegated the Christian Front to a footnote in history.
But Charles R. Gallagher, an associate professor of history at Boston College and Jesuit priest, suspected there was more to the story. An expert on Catholics in mid-twentieth century America, Professor Gallagher spent 10 years researching in archives and having documents declassified. The result: his 2021 book, Nazis of Copley Square: The Forgotten Story of the Christian Front, that demonstrates the Christian Front was more important then, and now, than historians have claimed. On March 21, Professor Gallagher delivered a compelling lecture on the Christian Front to the Northeastern community as part of the Robert Salomon Morton Lecture Series.
Gallagher demonstrated that the Christian Front’s alignment with Nazism, and even real-life Nazis, was deeper, scarier and more rooted in theology than previously thought. The Christian Front plotted sedition, engaged in espionage, and provoked attacks. It counted on the Boston police to look the other way and the FBI to fumble investigations. Gallagher also presented lessons for the present. He showed how people who seem to be in the mainstream – respected Catholic lay leaders, influential priests – can be radicalized and, through grievance, competition, and unholy religious ideals, can be radicalized to antisemitism in particular. Gallagher relied upon compelling photographs to illustrate his themes, including one of the German Consulate in Boston flying a swastika flag two blocks from the State House, and another of five Christian Fronters showing off their semi-automatic rifles.
Father Charles Coughlin, a Detroit priest with a radio program that drew 30 million listeners each week, started the Christian Front in 1938. Coughlin had become “a full-blown antisemite” by then, Gallagher said. Coughlin wanted an organization to engage in what he saw as a worldwide conflict between Christianity on one side, and JudeoBolshevism on the other.
Coughlin subscribed to the idea that Jews were behind the Russian Revolution and they continued to push communist ideology across the globe.
Coughlin selected two lay leaders as his “foot soldiers,” Gallagher said: John Cassidy in New York City and Francis P. Moran in Boston, both of whom were “wildly anticommunist” and “extremely well versed in Christian theology.” The Christian Front’s New York chapter got off to a faster start, with
more adherents and some support from the local Catholic hierarchy. But then the FBI raided the group’s offices in early 1940, seizing guns, bombs, and bombmaking material. The U.S. government filed charges against the New York leaders of the Christian Front, including Cassidy.
Gallagher said that the weapons the government found indicated that the group’s plot to overthrow the government was more serious than many historians have claimed. “For 85 years historians thought these folks were clownish and this was just a comedic caper,” Gallagher said.
But the guns they possessed, M1903 Springfield rifles, were “a weapon of war, a really dangerous rifle.”
CHARLES GALLAGHER, S.J.
CHARLES GALLAGHER (CONTINUED FROM PAGE 9)
The government made a serious tactical era in prosecuting the men however, Gallagher found. The government assumed the Christian Fronters stole the rifles from National Guard armories; they couldn’t possibly obtain them in any other way. The government was wrong. A codicil to the U.S. Army code allowed NRA members to buy the rifles and have them shipped to their homes – which is what the Christian Fronters did.
Another problem the prosecution faced was proving seditious conspiracy to overthrow the government in Washington, D.C., when the weapons and training were in Brooklyn. (A problem the prosecution of the Proud Boys doesn’t face, Gallagher added wryly, because its members stormed the Capitol.) “The trial fizzled because of these issues,” Gallagher said.
With the New York chapter shut down by the FBI, Boston became the center of Christian Front action. Moran, who had studied to be a priest and spoke fluent German, organized in Dorchester, Roxbury, South Boston, and Mattapan. After the New York trial and acquittal, membership in Boston spiked to 30,000 members. The Christian Front began opening chapters throughout New England.
Moran tried to get the Boston archdiocese to recognize the Christian Front as an official diocesan group, but Cardinal O’Connell wouldn’t go along, Gallagher said. Another source of funds presented itself. Herbert W. Scholz was the German consul in Boston, which served as diplomatic cover for his espionage activity. Scholz also was a member of the SS and “a pure ideologically driven Nazi,” Gallagher said. He identified Moran as a “target” to enlist in espionage. Moran jumped and Scholz reciprocated, paying for a suite of offices for the Christian Front at the Copley Square Hotel, across from the Hynes Center.
Scholz was “very charming, very handsome, very debonair,” Gallagher said. “You can see how a working-class Irish kid from South Boston comes under the aegis of someone like this and becomes his agent. He does his bidding.”
The bidding included lobbying to convince the U.S. military to adopt the Johnson rifle as its semiautomatic weapon of choice. Germany had acquired tens of thousands of Johnson rifles when it took over the Netherlands. It hoped for additional guns and parts from stepped up U.S. manufacture. Under the German government’s direction, the Christian Front organized a drive that delivered thousands of letters pushing the U.S. government to adopt the rifle. “Ostensibly, the Christian Front is a neighborhood religious group,” Gallagher said, but the government never wondered why it was lobbying for the military to adopt a certain rifle. “Federal agencies never figured out that it was a spy and agent,” he added. The U.S. government ultimately stuck with the rifle it already had in use.
British Intelligence also became involved with the Christian Front -- through an operation to suppress it. A British intelligence agent helped form another Boston neighborhood group to counter the Christian Front, the Irish-American Defense Association. The defense association convinced the Boston Police to clamp down on the Christian Front. Gallagher described the police action as ineffective in curtailing the group, instead pushing the Christian Front into more dangerous, underground activities. As an underground movement, the Christian Front provoked “Catholic on Jewish gang warfare in Boston in Fall 1943,” Gallagher explained. “This violence against Boston Jews is not a spontaneous upswell from the streets but the blowback from a very successfully run British intelligence operation.”
Gallagher also explained why it took so long to recognize this intrigue and violence as an important missing chapter in the history of the American right. “There are a lot of spies in this story, and spies cover their tracks,” he said. It took “a lot of digging and sniffing and hunches” to uncover the information. “Most of the documents used to write the book were previously classified,” Gallagher added. Besides, “the government did not have an interest in publicizing the case after 1945 and neither did the Catholic Church,” he said.
Many of the historians who studied this period didn’t consider the Christian Front important enough to do all that digging, Gallagher explained. They tended to be “political historians who missed the theological impulses that prompted political actions
(continued on next page)
THE 29TH ANNUAL ROBERT SALOMON MORTON LECTURE:
PROFESSOR JAN GRABOWSKI
BY JESSIE SIGLER
This year’s Morton lecturer was someone you may have seen in the news. Jan Grabowski, Professor of History at the University of Ottawa, was sued for defamation in a Polish court after co-editing a book concerning the complicity of non-Jewish Poles in the Holocaust. The court ruled against Professor Grabowski, along with his co-editor Barbara Engelking, but the verdict was later overturned by an appeals court last August.
The book in question is Night Without End, a twovolume history about the fate of Jews in Germanoccupied Poland during the Second World War. The book includes a brief passage quoting a Holocaust survivor who accused an elder in the village of Malinowo of collaborating with the Nazis. The case, brought by that village elder’s niece, was financed by a group called the Polish League Against Defamation. Grabowski and Engelking were ordered to apologize, but in the appeal a judge stated that the lawsuit was “an unacceptable violation of the freedom of scientific research and the freedom of expression.”
The wider context is the rule of Poland’s right-wing Law and Justice party, who for years has been trying
(continued on page 12) GRABOWSKI SHARED ALARMING EXAMPLES OF STATE-SPONSORED HOLOCAUST DISTORTION BEYOND HIS PERSONAL EXPERIENCE.
CHARLES GALLAGHER (CONTINUED FROM PAGE 10)
on the part of the members of this group.” Previous historians assumed that if it didn’t involve electoral politics, it didn’t matter, he said.
Plus, they weren’t oriented toward religious explanations. “Most historians of this period were trained in the Marxist critique,” Gallagher said, “and one of the gaps I saw was Marxists had a blind spot toward religion.” They weren’t going to focus on religion as a possible motivator for political action.
Finally, academics weren’t oriented toward studying the political right. “Before Trump if you tried to do a serious academic study of right-wingers, people were suspicious of you,” Gallagher said. “They were saying: are you trying to glorify the right and do we really want to give academic credibility to the right?” Gallagher went ahead anyway. “I just found it fascinating from a religious perspective,” he said.
Trump’s presidency and his continuing political impact have made such studies more acceptable, he said. A change in the Catholic Church also has made it easier for Gallagher. Asked by an audience member whether it was hard for Gallagher, as a priest, to criticize the Church, Gallagher said his previous writings had drawn criticism from some Catholics. When the current pope opened more of the Holocaustera Vatican archives, however, Pope Francis “said Catholics should not be afraid of their history,” according to Gallagher. “I always thought that but now to have a pope say that was really consoling, especially as this book was going to press.”
[WATCH THE RECORDING]
Laurel Leff is Professor of Journalism at Northeastern University, and Core Faculty in Jewish Studies
JAN GRABOWSKI (CONTINUED FROM PAGE 11)
to sanitize history by promoting Polish heroism, and erasing Polish complicity, in the Holocaust. In 2018, an “anti-defamation” law was passed in Poland penalizing public speech that attributes responsibility for the Holocaust to Poland or the Polish nation.
At the 2022 Robert Salomon Morton Lecture, entitled “From Holocaust Denial to Holocaust Distortion: The State-Sponsored Attack on the Memory of the Holocaust in Poland,” Professor Grabowski provided chilling context to the backlash against his work, and gave an illustrative account of how the freedoms of Polish historians are being curtailed.
He spoke about the insidiousness of Holocaust distortion—which, in his words, is a “state- financed and state approved methodology of distorting our understanding of history, or denying the history itself.” Grabowski shared alarming examples of statesponsored Holocaust distortion beyond his personal experience, including government commemoration (in the form of a plaque at the Treblinka railway station) of a Pole who allegedly brought water to Jews in transport trains awaiting extermination. There is no credible historical proof of this action, but those who have read Jan Gross’s Golden Harvest will have heard accounts by survivors of extortion (not charity) at the Treblinka station, where Poles sold water at the price of any money or valuables a Jewish victim had left.
With this type of government commemoration, the focus is shifted away from Jewish victimhood and onto Polish national pride. Grabowski explained that this distortion can be enticing to those who wish to put a “positive spin” on history, but in reality, no one is redeemed by stories from Treblinka.
In his lecture, Grabowski also brought forth examples of how Polish state institutions, such as the Institute of National Remembrance, employ hundreds of professional historians and are geared towards Holocaust distortion in service of the state. A former director of the second-largest branch of the Institute of National Remembrance, Tomasz Greniuch, resigned in 2021 after it came to light that he previously demonstrated with a far right group and was photographed giving the Hitler salute.
When Grabowski touched on his own court case during the lecture, he highlighted how concerning to academic freedom the original ruling was. He explained that the verdict, “recognized that, indeed, national pride and national dignity are personal goods which can be defended in a court,” and that if someone feels their national pride has been offended by a historian, they can go to court. He also shared that the verdict asserted historians “have no right to judge importance, have no right to create differences of value between different historical sources.” Had this decision not been overturned, its consequences would have been disastrous and far reaching. Despite being overturned, the original decision still created a chilling atmosphere, and showcases disturbing forces in Polish society that are not going away.
Polling from 1992 through 2021 shows that more and more Poles believe that Poles and Jews suffered equally (or that Poles suffered more) during the Holocaust.
I first heard Professor Grabowski speak on a Northeastern Dialogue trip to Poland, led by Professor Jeff Burds, back in 2018. Professor Grabowski gave a timely and engaging guest lecture on Polish Jews in hiding during the Holocaust and touched on the dangerousness of the anti-defamation law, which had been passed merely weeks prior. This year’s Morton lecture was a fascinating bookend, a chance to hear from Professor Grabowski again, this time on the other end of his wearying odyssey of censorship (this one, at least). I highly recommend giving his lecture a listen.
Jessie Sigler is an alumna of the Northeastern Jewish Studies Program and a past member of the Holocaust and Genocide Awareness Committee
[WATCH THE RECORDING]
JAN GRABOWSKI AND SIMON RABINOVITCH
