Book Contributors

Michael F. Polgar, PhD is a co-editor of this OER textbook: ‘The Holocaust: Remembrance, Respect, and Resilience.” He is a professor and sociologist working at Penn State University in Hazleton, PA. Michael is committed to Holocaust Education and also author of the book Holocaust and Human Rights Education. With co-editor Suki John, Ph.D., Michael is a descendant (son and grandson) of Holocaust survivors from Budapest Hungary. Some of the Polgar family, including Michael’s father Steven Polgar PhD, his aunt Vera John-Steiner PhD, and his Grandparents Sophie and Ferenc Polgar, survived the Bergen Belsen concentration camp. Michael lives in Pennsylvania with his wife Michele Schasberger and three daughters Sophie, Isabelle, and Rebecca Polgar.

Suki John, PhD is editor of arts content and co-editor of The Holocaust: Remembrance, Respect, and Resilience. She is a Professor of Classical & Contemporary Dance at Texas Christian University, and Director of Dance for the Texas Jewish Arts Association. Having worked internationally as a dance artist and scholar for most of her career, she continues to teach, choreograph, and write about the intersections between dance, history, activism, and culture. Her book, Contemporary Dance in Cuba: técnica cubana as Revolutionary Movement (McFarland Press 2012) is a personal and scholarly account of Cuban dance. She founded The Sh’ma Project: Move Against Hate, which is centered around Sh’ma, a choreodrama and dance film. Sh’ma is based on the Holocaust experience of Suki’s mother Veronka (nee Polgar) John-Steiner, and Veronka’s parents and brother, Steven Polgar, father of co-author Michael Polgar.

Michael F. Polgar, PhD is a co-editor of this OER textbook: ‘The Holocaust: Remembrance, Respect, and Resilience.” He is a professor and sociologist working at Penn State University in Hazleton, PA. Michael is committed to Holocaust Education and also author of the book Holocaust and Human Rights Education. With co-editor Suki John, Ph.D., Michael is a descendant (son and grandson) of Holocaust survivors from Budapest Hungary. Some of the Polgar family, including Michael’s father Steven Polgar PhD, his aunt Vera John-Steiner PhD, and his Grandparents Sophie and Ferenc Polgar, survived the Bergen Belsen concentration camp. Michael lives in Pennsylvania with his wife Michele Schasberger and three daughters Sophie, Isabelle, and Rebecca Polgar.

Suki John, PhD is editor of arts content and co-editor of The Holocaust: Remembrance, Respect, and Resilience. She is a Professor of Classical & Contemporary Dance at Texas Christian University, and Director of Dance for the Texas Jewish Arts Association. Having worked internationally as a dance artist and scholar for most of her career, she continues to teach, choreograph, and write about the intersections between dance, history, activism, and culture. Her book, Contemporary Dance in Cuba: técnica cubana as Revolutionary Movement (McFarland Press 2012) is a personal and scholarly account of Cuban dance. She founded The Sh’ma Project: Move Against Hate, which is centered around Sh’ma, a choreodrama and dance film. Sh’ma is based on the Holocaust experience of Suki’s mother Veronka (nee Polgar) John-Steiner, and Veronka’s parents and brother, Steven Polgar, father of co-author Michael Polgar.

Dr. Avril Alba is Associate Professor in Holocaust Studies and Jewish Civilisation and Chair of the Department of Hebrew, Biblical and Jewish Studies at the University of Sydney. She teaches and researches in the broad areas of Holocaust and modern Jewish history with a focus on Jewish and Holocaust museums. Her monograph, “The Holocaust Memorial Museum: Sacred Secular Space”, was published in 2015. From 2002 to 2011 Avril was the Education Director at the Sydney Jewish Museum, where she also served as the Project Director/Curator for the permanent exhibitions ‘Culture and Continuity’ (2009), ‘The Holocaust’ (2017), and ‘The Holocaust and Human Rights’ (2018). She is currently working on an ARC Discovery project, ‘The Memory of the Holocaust in Australia’.

Eileen M. Angelini, recipient of a 2010-2011 Canada-U.S. Fulbright award as a Visiting Research Chair in Globalization and Cultural Studies at McMaster University and named Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques in August 2011, received her B.A. in French from Middlebury College and her M.A. and Ph.D. in French Studies from Brown University. Named to the 2013-2017 Fulbright Specialist Roster, she was the Grantee for “Francophone Culture: Literature, Pedagogy and Additional Language Acquisition” at the University of Manitoba. Dr. Angelini has been named a 2020-2022 United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Holocaust Institute for Teacher Educators (HITE) Professor and was invited to participate in the 2020-2022 Olga Lengyel Institute (TOLI) for Holocaust Studies and Human Rights Summer Seminar. She is particularly honored to be the inaugural Holocaust Education Fellow at the Crane Center for Mass Atrocity Prevention and to be invited by the U.S. Department of State’s Office of Alumni Affairs and Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs to participate in the 2022 Alumni Thematic International Exchange Seminar (TIES) on “American Identity: Exploring our Collective Memory, Heritages, and Histories.”

Michael Berenbaum is a Distinguished Professor of Jewish Studies and Director of the Sigi Ziering Institute at American Jewish University in Los Angeles. He was the Managing Editor of the Second Edition of the Encyclopedia Judaica.  In the past he was Project Director overseeing the creation of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and President and CEO of the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation. He is the author and editor of 23 books and has appeared in more than two dozen documentaries. His work in film has earned Emmy Awards and Museums he has created and developed can be seen in cities throughout the United States, Europe and Mexico.

Amanda M. Caleb is Professor of Medical Humanities at Geisinger Commonwealth School of Medicine, having previously served as Professor and Founding Director of Medical and Health Humanities and Professor of English at Misericordia University. She earned her PhD in English and MA in Nineteenth-Century Studies from the University of Sheffield and her BA in English from Davidson College. She has published articles and book chapters on a range of health humanities topics, including the rhetoric of British eugenics and the influence on Nazi policies, the medicalization of social policies from Nazi Germany to today, disability studies and COVID-19 policies, stigma-reduction through narrative encounters, and dementia and the role of narrative medicine. She is currently working on a co-edited book (with John Pollock and Douglas Vakoch) on COVID-19 and pandemic communications.

George D. Dalbo is a Ph.D. candidate in Curriculum and Instruction and Social Studies Education at the University of Minnesota, as well as a high school social studies teacher at Clinton Community High School in Clinton, Wisconsin. Previously, George served as the Educational Outreach Coordinator for the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the University of Minnesota. George’s research and teaching interests include Holocaust, genocide, and human rights education in K-12 curricula and classrooms. George has taught social studies and history in every grade from 5th through 12th in public, charter, and independent schools in Minnesota and Wisconsin, as well as English as a Foreign language in a high school in Vienna, Austria. George completed his B.A. in History and German at the University of Buffalo and his M.Ed. in Social Studies Education at the College of Saint Scholastic. George can be reached at dalbo006@umn.edu.

Ursula Duba is a poet. This chapter is based on a lecture given by Duba as part of the Yale University Mellon Sawyer Seminar Series on Genocide on February 25, 1999.  It was updated in December 2002, and then edited in 2022 for this OER textbook. This lecture includes personal reflection on her experiences as a German-born post-war author who is one of many who recognized the difficult intergenerational and family relationships that were related to unacknowledged complicity and the many silences surrounding Nazi crimes.

Dr. Ruth Eshel has a rich background in performance and research in dance. Having danced and choreographed many multi-disciplinary solo recitals (1977-1987). She has been a field researcher for the Israel Dance Archive at Beit Ariella from its establishment (1991-1995), a lecturer on the history of dance, and dance in Israel at Haifa University (1991-2005). She went on to make a research on the dance of Ethiopian Jews and established the contemporary Ethiopian dance troupes, Eskesta (at the university of Haifa, 1995-2010) and Beta (2010). She was co-editor of the quarterly, Dance in Israel (1993-1998) with Giora Manor and the founding editor of the periodical Dance Today – The Dance Magazine of Israel (Mahol Akhshav, from 2000 to the present). Eshel was dance critic for Ha’aretz Daily for 27 years (1991-2017). She received both the Minister of Culture’s (2012) and the Israel Artists Organization (E.M.I, 2018) Lifetime Achievement Award in Artistic Dance.

Francesca Freeman is a PhD student in Peace Studies and History at the University of Notre Dame. She holds an M.A. in Holocaust and Genocide Studies from the University of Amsterdam and a B.A. in Anthropology and Comparative Race and Ethnic Studies from the University of Chicago. Her Master’s thesis, which was awarded the University of Amsterdam Faculty of Humanities Thesis Prize, analyzed rescuing during the Rwandan Genocide at the micro-, meso-, and macro- levels of Rwandan society. Francesca intends to study how regional and international state actors in the modern Middle East established themselves as altruistic rescuers, but then used the morally absolute definition of rescuing to deny or rationalize involvement in subsequent war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide.

Yael Friedman is a Holocaust and Genocide Studies educator with over a decade of experience in museum and non-profit spaces. She graduated with a Dual Master’s in Education and Jewish Studies and Hebrew and Judaic Studies from New York University as a Jim Joseph Fellow, with a concentration in Holocaust Education. She holds a BA in Jewish, Islamic and Near Eastern Studies from Washington University in St. Louis, where she received the Steven S. Schwarzschild Prize for Overall Excellence in Jewish Studies. Yael’s background includes work in various capacities at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, Yad Vashem, the Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust (MJH), Centropa, and Facing History and Ourselves, as well as at the U.S. Department of State for the Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism. Her work focuses on immersive international education programs. At MJH, she managed several international programs through the Auschwitz Jewish Center, including programs for military students, and college and graduate students. As an International Visitors Fellow at the Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village in Rwanda, Yael gained a unique lens into daily life and rebuilding and healing efforts in a post-atrocity country.

Jennifer Goss is a Program Manager for Echoes & Reflections. She spent 19 years as a high school Social Studies teacher including courses in the area of Holocaust and Genocide Studies. Jennifer holds dual M.A.s in Holocaust and Genocide Studies (West Chester University of Pennsylvania) and History (Pace University). She adjuncts at Blue Ridge Community College.

In addition to her teaching, Jennifer is the producer of the award-winning, Emmy-nominated documentary film, Misa’s Fugue and co-authored the memoir of Itka Zygmuntowicz, Remember, My Child. In 2020, she authored a chapter in the University of Wisconsin Press’ release, Teaching and Understanding the Holocaust. She is a USHMM Teacher Fellow, Alfred J. Lerner Fellow and currently serves as the Willesden Project Fellow for USC-Shoah Foundation.

Kasandra Housley attended Seton Hall University where she studied Diplomacy and International Relations with a focus on ethnic conflict. After obtaining her Master’s Degree in Political Science, she began her career as a college educator in Indiana’s community college system where she remained for eight years. Ms. Housley currently resides in Bloomington, Indiana where she continues to work as a writer of both fiction and non-fiction. Her current research interests include human security, futurism, and the climate crisis.

Allen Kaeja is an internationally recognized and award-winning Choreographer and DanceFilm Director. He’s created over 180 stage works and choreographed 28 films. Co-Artistic Director of Kaeja d’Dance with Karen Kaeja, Allen’s stage and film works have been featured in commercials, films and festivals around the world. He has received numerous national and international commissions, teaches Kaeja Elevations and Dance Film master classes worldwide.

Allen and Karen recently completed performing in Asia, Israel, across Canada, Mexico, USA and UK. Allen was choreographing Wendy and Peter Pan until COVID closed the Stratford Festival. The Kaeja’s received Dance Ontario’s Lifetime Achievement Award.

Allen thanks: Karen, Aniya and Mika Kaeja; Aysha Terra Turgeon and Suki John for their brilliant editing.

Judy LaPietra is the Assistant Director of the Stan Greenspon Holocaust and Social Justice Education Center at Queens University of Charlotte. She has 20+ years of experience in teaching the Holocaust, developing transformative educational programs, and ensuring the legacy of Holocaust victims and survivors continues.

Judy is a doctoral student in Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Gratz College currently working on her dissertation in post-genocidal reconciliation. She received an M.A. in Holocaust Genocide Studies from Gratz College, and M.S. in Secondary Education and History from Queens College, City University of New York, and her B.A. in political science from Queens College, City University of New York.

Lara Martin Lengel, Ph.D. is Professor in the School of Communication Studies at Bowling Green State University. She began her research on transnational and intercultural communication as a Fulbright Scholar in Tunisia (1993-1994). Her work addresses gender and identity, spiritual communication, and how communication can advance social, economic, and environmental justice. Her research is published in, among others, International Journal of Communication, Gender & History, Text and Performance Quarterly, Journal of Communication Inquiry, Language and Intercultural Communication, Feminist Media Studies, Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, and Studies in Symbolic Interaction. Her grant awards total nearly $500,000 for research and co-directed partnership development programs from U.S. Department of State’s Middle East Partnership Program and Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, and the Fulbright Program.

Phyllis K. Lerner is a faculty associate working with the Johns Hopkins University Graduate School of Education, Teach For America National Partnership. Her background includes decades of work at the California State Department of Education’s Title IX Office and the Los Angeles Educational Equity Center. In 1973, Phyllis Lerner was the USA delegate leader to the Children’s International Summer Village (CISV) in Sweden. Since then, she has spiraled back to global education efforts including six more years with CISV in Germany, Canada, Sweden, the US and India. She has completed two senior terms abroad with American Jewish World Service. The first took her to Mumbai, India, the area made famous in the film Slumdog Millionaire. Then, she served in western Thailand, doing teacher preparation in Burmese refugee camps. Phyllis is best described by the titles she honors from five recent semesters at Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village (ASYV-Rwanda): Auntie and Teacher.

Meryl Menashe (author) is a second-generation leader and works as a Holocaust consultant for various Holocaust organizations. Her most recent works are preserving her Menashe family history. Her family is featured at the Secret Heroes Museum in Berlin and other projects under development. Meryl assists Irving Roth at the Holocaust Resource Center in Temple Judea, Manhasset. She has served in various capacities at the Holocaust Memorial and Tolerance Center of Nassau County since 1998.

She received a Master’s in History from Adelphi University, and taught in the Plainview School District for 27 years where she created an interdisciplinary Holocaust curriculum for middle-school students and was the founding coordinator of the Advisory program, adding a leadership component for 8th graders. Ms. Menashe is a Teacher Fellow of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, recipient of the Bruce Morrell Education Award, and was awarded a Resistance Fellowship in 2008. Since 2015, she has been the Program Liaison for the American Gathering’s Holocaust and Jewish Resistance Teachers Program.

SCOTT ALAN METZGER is Associate Professor of Education at The Pennsylvania State University on the main campus at University Park. A former high-school social studies teacher from Michigan, he serves as education lead consult for the Holocaust, Genocide, and Human Rights Education Initiative at Penn State. His academic work involves social studies teacher preparation, history teaching and learning, and uses of the past in popular culture. Metzger has published in journals such as Theory and Research in Social Education, Journal of Social Studies Research, The History Teacher, and Social Education, and he is also co-editor of The Wiley International Handbook of History Teaching and Learning and co-author of Teaching History with Film: Strategies for Secondary Social Studies (Routledge). He can be contacted at sam59@psu.edu.

Desiree Montenegro, M.A. Communication Studies, California State University—Los Angeles, is an Open Educational Resources (OER) expert. As a faculty member at Palo Verde College, and affiliate faculty with the California Department of Corrections and several universities and colleges in greater Los Angeles, she specializes in working with underprivileged, first generation, and at-risk students, including students with disabilities and those in the prison system. Desiree directed Disability Awareness Training for all General Education faculty and teaching assistants at CSU—LA. She has presented guest lectures at numerous universities on topics including Disability Awareness, Social Support for Women at Risk, Gender, and Strategic Communication for Peace and Security. Her recent publications appear in Frontiers in Communication and Embodied Activisms: Performative Expressions of Political and Social Action.

Victoria Ann Newsom, Ph.D. is Professor of Communication Studies and affiliate faculty in Social Justice and Diversity at Olympic College in Bremerton, Washington. Her research centers on negotiations of power, gender, and identity, media activism, peace studies, Islamophobia studies, and cultural studies-grounded analyses of transnational diplomacies and policy making. Victoria is dedicated to media, digital, and critical literacies curriculum and pedagogy development. She is dedicated to democratizing educational processes through developing Open Educational Resources (OER), open pedagogy development, and accessibility and need-based assessment. Her publications appear in, among others, Journal of International Women’s Studies, Feminist Media Studies, Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Global Media Journal, International Journal of Communication, Language & Intercultural Communication, Communication Studies, Communication Yearbook, Women & Language, and French Journal for Media Research.

Gillian Walnes Perry was the Co-founder and Executive Director of the Anne Frank Trust UK for 26 years. The Trust was set up in 1990, along with family and friends of Mr Otto Frank, as a partner organization of the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam. When Gillian retired in 2016, the Trust was delivering educational programmes to combat prejudice and discrimination to schools, prisons and communities in all parts of the UK.

Gillian now lectures on the life and legacy of Anne Frank, as well as other social history topics, in the UK, the US and internationally. She also acts as an ambassador and advisor to the Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect in the USA and other NGOs, and has advised the Director of Policy of the Office of the First Lady, Michelle Obama, on the social impact of teenage peer education. She has spoken at the United Nations in New York, 10 Downing Street and the Clinton Presidential Center in Little Rock Arkansas. Her first book, ‘The Legacy of Anne Frank’ was published in 2018.
In 2010, Gillian was awarded an MBE (Membership of the Order of the British Empire) by Queen Elizabeth for her work in education.

Elisa Rapaport earned her doctorate from the University at Buffalo, SUNY, as the George F. Hourani Fellow in Applied Ethics. A former Philosophy Department Chair, Associate Professor, and Director of the Center for Social and Ethical Concerns at Molloy College, she currently works with nonprofits that address civil discourse through education, serving as a Senior Fellow and the recent chief operating officer of the Anne Frank Center USA.

Stephani Richards-Wilson, PhD, EdD, is an Associate Professor of Business and Management at Alverno College in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She holds a Doctorate in Leadership Studies from the University of San Diego and a PhD in German from the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s highly ranked program. Her first dissertation dealt with the benefits of an MBA degree and her second focused on Willi Graf of the Nazi resistance group called the White Rose. She explored the role of Bildung in Graf’s decision to resist the National Socialists. The German word Bildung does not have a direct translation. It means self-cultivation, self-development, or self-improvement through cultural activities such a reading literature, attending classical music concerts, and appreciating the fine arts such as poetry and theater. For more information about her work and research related to Willi Graf (1918-1943), please see her academic profile on the Academia website.

Suzanne D. Rutland (OAM, PhD), Professor Emerita, Department of Hebrew, Biblical & Jewish Studies, University of Sydney, is a renowned Australian Jewish historian. She has published widely on Australian Jewry, the Holocaust, Soviet Jewry, antisemitism and Jewish education, her main book being Edge of the Diaspora: Two Centuries of Jewish Settlement in Australia (1988, 1997 and 2001). She is past president of the Australian Association for Jewish Studies and patron and past president, Australian Jewish Historical Society. In 2008, she received the Medal of the Order of Australia for services to Higher Jewish Education and interfaith dialogue. As a member of the Australian Delegation to International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, she serves on the Education Working Group and the Committee on Antisemitism and Holocaust Denial.

William N. Schabio, Jr. focuses his scholarly interest on metaphysics and social philosophy, with research on emotion theory and the phenomenon of the ‘good Samaritan’ and past doctoral studies at the University at Buffalo, SUNY. Of great concern to him is the state of democratic society throughout the past century, most notably the rise of tribalism and the demise of civil discourse, cooperation, and respect.

Melissa K. Stanley is the Director of Secondary Social Studies at Central Michigan University. She is a former high school social studies teacher where she also coached National History Day at the regional, state, and national levels. Her academic interests include social studies teaching and learning, social studies teacher preparation, classroom discussion, and the teaching and discussion of contentious issues. She can be contacted at m.stanley@cmich.edu.

Jesse Tannetta is a former high school teacher and is the Program Manager for Echoes & Reflections specializing in providing professional development to middle and high school teachers focused on Holocaust education throughout the United States. He holds bachelor’s degrees in History and Catholic Theology from Emmanuel College as well as a master’s degree in Holocaust and Genocide Studies from Gratz College. He is a current Ph.D. student who is just beginning his dissertation analyzing the life of concentration camp guard Hermine Braunsteiner Ryan. Originally from the Boston area, he now resides in New York City.

Howard Tinberg is a Professor of English at Bristol Community College, Fall River, Massachusetts. He is a Teaching Fellow at the US Memorial Holocaust Museum and has co-taught an interdisciplinary seminar for several years. He is the author or co-author of several books, including “Teaching and Learning the Holocaust: An Integrative Approach, ” “Border Talk: Writing and Knowing in the Two-Year College,” “Writing with Consequence: What Writing Does in the Disciplines, and “The Community College Writer: Exceeding Expectations.” He is co-editor of several collections, including “What is College-Level Writing?” Vols I and II and “Deep Reading: Teaching Reading in the Writing Classroom.” In 2004, he was named Outstanding Community Colleges Professor by the Council for the Advancement of Education and the Carnegie Foundation.

Karen Uslin is currently Director of Research for the Defiant Requiem Foundation in Washington, DC, and adjunct professor of Jewish Studies at Stockton University in Galloway, NJ. Karen Uslin began researching music in Terezin as an undergraduate music and theater student at Muhlenberg College (BA ’04), and continued her research at Temple University (MM ’06) and The Catholic University of America, where she received a Ph.D. in Musicology/Central & Eastern European Studies in 2015. She is also Adjunct Professor of Jewish Studies at Stockton University. Karen has presented at various national and international conferences, guest lectured at universities in the United States and Europe, and spoken at various churches and synagogues on Catholic-Jewish relations.

Previously, Karen worked as Adjunct Professor of Music History at Rowan University, Interim Development Director and Dramaturg at Cape May Stage in Cape May, NJ, and Genealogist at the National Society Daughters of the American Revolution.

In addition to her research and public speaking, Karen is an active performer and vocalist. She has sung at various venues around the world, including the Vatican, the Academy of Music in Philadelphia, the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, and tours of Italy, Germany and Austria.

Nicolas de Warren is Professor of Philosophy and Jewish Studies at Penn State University. He is the author of Husserl and the Promise of Time (2010), A Momentary Breathlessness in the Sadness of Time (2018), Original Forgiveness (2020), and German Philosophy and the First World War (2023). He has published widely in the history of philosophy, European thought, phenomenology and hermeneutics, aesthetics, literature, and social-political philosophy.

Dr. Ron Weisberger is currently Director of the Bristol Community College Holocaust and Genocide Center, Fall River MA. He is also an Adjunct Professor of History co-teaching with Dr. Howard Tinberg a course “Remembering the Holocaust in Literature and History.”  Dr. Weisberger has a BA in History from Glassboro State College (now Rowan University), an MA in History from Kent State University, an M.Phil. Ed., Institute for Open Education, Newton College, and Ed.D. in Higher Education, the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Among other publications, Dr. Weisberger co-wrote with Howard Tinberg, Teaching and Learning and the Holocaust (Indiana University Press, 2014).

Edward Westermann received his Ph.D. in History from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is the author of Hitler’s Ostkrieg and the Indian Wars: Comparing Genocide and Conquest (University of Oklahoma Press, 2016), Hitler’s Police Battalions: Enforcing Racial War in the East (University Press of Kansas, 2005) and Flak: German Anti-Aircraft Defenses, 1914-1945 (University Press of Kansas, 2001). He is also a contributor to the Oxford Handbook of Holocaust Studies (OUP, 2012). Dr. Westermann has published extensively in the areas of Holocaust and military history and he is the recipient of numerous research grants and fellowships. He has been a Fulbright Fellow, a German Academic Exchange Service Fellow, and a J.B. and Maurice C. Shapiro Fellow at the USHMM. His latest book, Drunk on Genocide: Alcohol and Mass Murder in Nazi Germany will be published by Cornell University Press in March 2021.

Judith Brin Ingber directed the newly established dance program in the Department of Theatre Arts and Dance at the University of Minnesota in its first academic year, 1985-1986. She taught there for over twenty years and is known as the pioneer in the field of Jewish Dance Studies. Her writing can be found in peer-review journals including The Dance Research Journal; the Jewish Folklore and Anthropology Review; The International Dance Encyclopedia; the Shalvi Hyman International Jewish Women’s Encyclopedia; Dance Chronicle; Dance Perspectives; Dance Magazine; the Forward and the dance magazine she co-founded, The Israel Dance Annual, known now as Dance Today. The flagship anthology she edited, Seeing Israeli and Jewish Dance, was published by Wayne State University Press. She also co-founded, choreographed, and danced in the chamber performing arts troupe Voices of Sepharad which toured extensively in the US, Poland, Istanbul and Tel Aviv.

Naomi Patz, D.J.R.E., reconstructed and reimagined The Last Cyclist from a lost cabaret written by a prisoner in the Terezín Ghetto in 1944. Her script has been staged since 2009 and was captured in 2017 as an award-winning film. Coauthor with Eugene Borowitz of Explaining Reform Judaism, her eight other books include monographs on two destroyed Czech Jewish communities. Most recently, she was lead editor of Married to the Rabbi: Sixty Spouses of Retired Reform Rabbis in Their Own Words. A graduate of Barnard College, she holds master’s degrees in English literature and Jewish education. In 2004, HUC-JIR awarded her an honorary doctorate in Jewish Religious Education.

Michael S. Bryant is Professor of History and Legal Studies at Bryant University in Smithfield, Rhode Island, and an adjunct professor of law for Creighton University Law School.  He specializes in the impact of the Holocaust on the law, human rights, German criminal law, and international humanitarian law.  Dr. Bryant is currently a member of the Board of Editors for Human Rights Review. Additionally, he has held fellowships from the Fulbright Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Science Foundation, the German Exchange Service (DAAD), the U. S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.   Professor Bryant is the author of seven books; among them is Confronting the “Good Death”: Nazi Euthanasia on Trial, 1945-53 (University Press of Colorado, 2005/2022); Eyewitness to Genocide: the “Operation Reinhard” Death Camp Trials, 1956-1966 (University of Tennessee Press, 2015); A World History of War Crimes: from Antiquity to the Present (Bloomsbury, 2015/2022); and Nazi Crimes and their Punishment, 1943-1950: A Short History with Documents (Hackett, 2021). Eyewitness to Genocide received the Book of the Year Award from the American National Chapter, Association Internationale de Droit Penal, while Nazi Crimes and Their Punishment was designated one of the best books of 2021 by Choice magazine. As of late Dr. Bryant has appeared on national and international media to address war crimes committed in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.  His interviews and articles have appeared in Time, The Spectator, CBC, and the American Legion magazine.

Marion Kant (PhD in musicology) has taught at the Universities of Cambridge and Pennsylvania. Her research focuses on the ideology and aesthetics of modernism in the 19th and 20th centuries, on the evolution of ballet and modern dance, on theatre and performance in the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich, on anti-fascist exile and secular Judaism. With musicians Sam Hsu (piano) and Marshall Taylor (saxophone) she organized a concert series of so called “Degenerate Music”, with events in Philadelphia, New York, New Jersey and Salzburg, Austria, performed between 2001 and 2012. She is currently editing a six-volume Cultural History of Dance for Bloomsbury Publishers.
Her book publications include:
– Ein westfälischer Jude in der preussischen Armee. Isaac Löwenstein aus Rietberg-Neuenkirchen und sein Tagebuch 1821-1823. Bielefeld: Verlag für Regionalgeschichte 2021.
– The Cambridge Companion to Ballet. Ed. Cambridge: CUP 2007
– Hitler’s Dancers: German Modern Dance and the Third Reich. With Lilian Karina. New York/Oxford: Berghahn Books 2003
– Auf der großen Straße. Jean Weidts Erinnerungen. Berlin: Henschelverlag 1984