2016 Events
November 30 ♦ Fretwell Hall, 100 UNC Charlotte campus ♦ 3:30 pm
The current migration situation in Europe: Germany, the EU, international law, and possible resolutions to the crisis
Speaker: Bruce Leimsidor
Bruce Leimsidor has served as counselor for asylum affairs in the Venice municipality’s program for asylum seekers; senior resettlement expert at the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees’ central resource center for East Africa; Director of the U.S. State Department’s Overseas Processing Entity in Vienna; and was the Director of the Central European office of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society. He has taught at the American University, Paris; Oberlin College; and Indiana University.
Sponsored by UNC Charlotte’s Department of Global, International & Area Studies
Thanks to the American Council on Germany Charlotte Warburg Chapter and Davidson College’s Department of German Studies for making this possible.
Approximately 125 people attended; photo by Sarah Minslow.
In Commemoration of the 78th Anniversary of Kristallnacht
The night of violence and terror that presaged the Holocaust
November 9 ♦ 12.30 – 1.45 ♦ Rowe Hall, 130
Holocaust survivor Susan Cernyak-Spatz
Susan Cernyak-Spatz, who is a Professor Emerita of German Literature at UNC Charlotte, was born in Vienna and in 1929 moved with her family to Berlin, where they witnessed Hitler’s rise to power. They fled to Prague in March 1938. Her father managed to escape to Belgium, but the Nazis arrested and eventually deported Cernyak-Spatz and her mother.
She was eventually deported to the death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau, where Cernyak-Spatz’s connections in the barracks and the fact that she could speak several languages helped her obtain a job in the camp’s administration offices, away from the deadly outside work details. She survived Auschwitz-Birkenau and the women’s concentration camp of Ravensbrück. Her mother died in the Theresienstadt ghetto.
More than 350 people attended the event. Close-up of Susan Czernak Spatz courtesy of CDK Global.
Racism, police violence, protests: “How could this happen in Charlotte?”
Lecture and dialogue with Brenda Tindal
Staff historian at the Levine Museum of the New South, former UNC Charlotte professor
Wednesday October 19 12:30 – 1:45 pm Rowe 130 (UNC Charlotte campus)
Rally and march at UNC Charlotte, September 28
Dr. Brenda Tindal was named Staff Historian at the Levine Museum of the New South in September 2015. A Charlotte native and graduate of UNC Charlotte, Tindal’s history with the museum first began in 2003, when she worked as an intern and research consultant, assisting with the award-winning exhibit “COURAGE: The Carolina Story that Changed America,” followed by the early development of the “Purses, Platforms, and Power: Women Changing Charlotte in the 1970s” exhibit. Tindal received a B.A. in History and Africana Studies at UNC Charlotte in 2004, and following her work at Levine Museum, began pursuing a M.A. in American Studies at Emory University in 2005; in 2015, she earned her Ph.D. in History and Culture within the Graduate Institute of Liberal Arts at Emory University.
During her post-graduate work, Tindal built on her initial museum experiences through a number of significant and comprehensive research, archival and exhibit projects. These included the papers of Pulitzer Prize-winning writer-activists Alice Walker, the organizational records of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) —both at the Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library (MARBL) at Emory—and the papers of Ambassador Andrew Young at the Auburn Avenue Research Library on African American Culture and History.
Since 2012, Tindal has lived in Charlotte and from 2012-2015 served as a lecturer in the Department of History and Honors College at UNC Charlotte), where she taught a broad range of courses related to 19th and 20th century U.S. and South African history, visual and material culture, and global social reform movements.
The Center for Holocaust, Genocide & Human Rights Studies and the Department of Global, International & Area Studies
Co-sponsored by the Department of Africana Studies and the Department of History
More information: John Cox, jcox73@uncc.edu
No Public Space for Anti-Semitism: Remembering the Holocaust in 21st Century Berlin
Lecture and dialogue with Dr. Andrea Mehrländer
Tuesday Oct. 18 ♦ 5pm – 7pm ♦ Fretwell 100
Dr. Andrea Mehrländer is a native of the city of Berlin and has been working as Executive Director of the Academy of Transatlantic Academic Studies since 2014. Between 1999 and 2001 she served as Deputy Director of the Center for U.S. Studies at the Martin-Luther-Universität in Halle-Wittenberg. In 2001, she returned to Berlin to serve as Checkpoint Charlie Foundation’s Executive Director until 2013. Since 2008 Dr. Mehrländer has been administering the annual Berlin Summer Academy, which helps U.S. public secondary school teachers and university professors to gain insight into the social, cultural, and political factors that led to the Holocaust
Memorials to the Holocaust in today’s Berlin. Hundreds of memorials of all sorts are scattered throughout the city.
Wednesday, September 14, 3:30 – 5:00 pm, Cone University Center, room 112 (UNC Charlotte campus)
Dr. Thomas Pegelow-Kaplan, Director of Appalachian State’s Center for Judaic, Holocaust, and Peace Studies and Leon Levine Distinguished Professor of Judaic, Holocaust, and Peace Studies
Lecture and discussion: “Black Genocide: Protest Movements and Social Memories of Mass Murder in the United States and West Germany of the 1960s and 1970s”
Co-sponsored by the Departments of Africana Studies and History
Monday, September 12, 2016
11:00 – 12:15, Cone University Center, room 210
Andrew Nagorski is an award-winning journalist and author who spent more than 30 years as a foreign correspondent and editor for Newsweek. He won acclaim for his 2013 Hitlerland: American Eyewitnesses to the Nazi Rise to Power and his 2007 book on Stalingrad, The Greatest Battle.
Sponsored by the Center for Holocaust, Genocide & Human Rights Studies and the Department of Global, International & Area Studies, as well as the Departments of History, Languages and Culture Studies, Political Science and Public Administration, and the Office of International Programs. More information: John Cox, jcox73@uncc.edu
Commemoration of the 21st anniversary of the Genocide in Srebrenica, Bosnia
A special event to mark the 21st anniversary of the Srebrenica genocide (July 11-13, 1995), when Serbian forces captured the eastern Bosnian town and summarily executed 8,372 Bosniak civilians. The event will feature brief documentary footage and talks by survivors.
The Bosnian-American community of Charlotte, NC numbers more than 3,000 and includes hundreds of genocide survivors as well as the families of the victims. This event are open to the public. Thank you in advance for remembering the victims of genocide.The event will include speakers and a brief excerpt of the BBC documentary “Srebrenica: A Cry from the Grave.”The event will include speakers and a brief excerpt of the BBC documentary “Srebrenica: A Cry from the Grave.”
Sunday, July 10, 1:00 – 2:00 pm
Cone University Center, Room 341 (Lucas Room)
UNC Charlotte campus; Cone parking lot is recommended, and is free for this event
And everyone is invited to a second commemorative event, held at the Shahid Mosque on Monday, July 11 from 8:30 – 9:30 pm. The mosque is located at 6200 Wilora Lake Rd., Charlotte.
Sponsored by the Congress of North American Bosniaks (North Carolina) and by UNC Charlotte’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences’s Department of Global, International & Area Studies and its Center for Holocaust, Genocide & Human Rights Studies; the Department of History; and the Office of International Programs (OIP)
More information: Dino Crnalic: dinocrnalic@yahoo.com