"History and Memory in a Genocidal World" Subject of March 11 Lecture

Media contact: Noelle Lemoine, communications assistant; tele: (413) 597-4277; email: [email protected]

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass., Feb. 27, 2003 — Douglas Greenberg, president and CEO of the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, will deliver the annual Henry Lore Bahr Lecture for the Promotion of Tolerance on Tuesday, March 11, at 8 p.m. in Brooks-Rogers Recital Hall.

Established by Steven Spielberg in 1994, The Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation videotapes and preserves the testimonies of Holocaust survivors and witnesses. The foundation has collected over 52,000 eyewitness testimonies in 57 countries and 32 languages.

Each interview consists of four to five 30-minute videotapes. Unlike film or television programs, the interviews are not edited, practiced, or polished, but are raw data &endash; primary sources of information.

According to Greenberg, “the integrity of the testimonies lies in their unaltered authenticity. The Shoah Foundation’s primary concern is to preserve and share each survivor’s story as it was told. The purpose of the interviews is to achieve a deeper understanding of the perspectives and experiences of survivors and other witnesses.”

Greenberg came to the Shoah Foundation in 2000 from the Chicago Historical Society where he served as president and CEO for seven years. From 1995 to 1998, Greenberg served as president of the Museums in the Park, an organization of nine Chicago museums. He has also served as vice president of the American Council of Learned Societies (1986-1993) and taught on the faculties of Rutgers, Princeton, and Lawrence Universities. Greenberg serves on the boards of the Organization of American Historians, the Research Libraries Group, and the University of California Humanities Research Institute.

In addition to his activities as a teacher and scholar, Greenberg has long been involved in the communication of historical understanding to the larger public.

He received his Ph.D. in history from Cornell University, and his B.A. from Rutgers University.

The Henry and Lore Bahr Lectureship was established to help promote mutual tolerance and respect, understanding of the conditions under which these values have broken down in the past, and ways to assure their realization in the future.

Henry H. Bahr (1910-1997) and Lore Bahr (1918-2002) were born in Germany and immigrated to the United States to avoid persecution at the hands of the Nazis. They met in New York, married, and are the parents of Robert Bahr ’67 and grandparents of Talia Bahr Goldfarb ’94, Danielle Bahr ’98, and Jonathan Bahr ’02. Forced to give up his career in the German judiciary, Henry had a successful business career. Lore was a homemaker until their son went to college and then joined Henry in business. Their experience in Germany fostered a strong sense of the importance of equality and fairness to all.

When asked, during an oral history, how to avoid a situation like that which occurred in Germany from occurring here, Henry said: “One has to stress more and more in education, and in every other way, tolerance. One must be able to catch any intolerance at the beginning and nip it in the bud. This sentiment provides the foundation for their gifts to Williams to promote tolerance and the impetus for the creation of this lecture.

END

Published February 27, 2003