Art Spiegelman’s Maus: A Survivor’s Tale, marks an important rupture in the lineage of survivor testimony. It presents a narrative of survivor testimony through the lens of an adult child of a survivor in a highly unorthodox medium, an early example of the graphic novel or commix format.
In 1974, Mark Podwal — noted author, illustrator, and physician — created a spare, illustrated Book of Lamentations. This complete English translation is graced with 28 black and white reflections, on the tragic text.
Artist and author Richard McBee will discuss both of these works.
This program is presented as part of the Museum’s new exhibition Art of Freedom: The Life & Work of Arthur Szyk opening December 7, 2025.
The Museum's newest exhibition, Art of Freedom: The Life & Work of Arthur Szyk, focuses Szyk's decades-long career during which he emerged as a powerful voice in the fight for freedom, justice, and democracy. Szyk’s stunning works, ranging from intricately detailed illuminated texts like his iconic Haggadah to decisively satirical political cartoons, reveal how creativity can be harnessed to fight for freedom and stand against antisemitism.
Join Irvin Ungar, the world's foremost expert on the art of Arthur Szyk and the tireless force behind the Szyk renaissance, for an opening-day tour of the exhibition.
The Museum's newest exhibition, Art of Freedom: The Life & Work of Arthur Szyk, focuses Szyk's decades-long career during which he emerged as a powerful voice in the fight for freedom, justice, and democracy. Szyk’s stunning works, ranging from intricately detailed illuminated texts like his iconic Haggadah to decisively satirical political cartoons, reveal how creativity can be harnessed to fight for freedom and stand against antisemitism.
Join Irvin Ungar, the world's foremost expert on the art of Arthur Szyk and the tireless force behind the Szyk renaissance, for an opening-day tour of the exhibition.
With The Girl Bandits of the Warsaw Ghetto: The True Story of Five Courageous Young Women Who Sparked an Uprising, Holocaust historian, archivist, and history blogger Elizabeth R. Hyman adds a new dimension to the story of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising during World War II, shining a long overdue spotlight on five, young, Polish Jewish women who helped lead the Jewish resistance, sabotage the Nazis, and aid Jews in hiding across occupied Poland and Eastern Europe. Known as “the girls” by the leadership of the resistance and “bandits” by their Nazi oppressors—they were central to the Jewish resistance as fighters, commanders, couriers, and smugglers.
Nazism has always faced resistance - from the German artists who risked their lives by drawing caricatures of the Nazis in the 1920s, or the man who infiltrated the SS to try to expose the Holocaust in the 1940s, or the people who uncovered former Nazis as part of a groundbreaking documentary in the 1970s. Dr. Luke Berryman’s Resisting Nazism is the first book to connect such stories, painting a vivid picture of resistance to far-right extremism across the generations.
Diana Mara Henry’s I Am André is an amazing real-life story of espionage, of courage and resistance, and of friendship and love. It pulls back the veil on the hidden history of the struggle for the identity of the Resistance in France. The life of ‘André’ Joseph Scheinmann is more intriguing and compelling than any work of fiction. His true-life story of derring-do starts in Munich, as a Jewish youth whose family moves to France in 1933 to escape the Nazi tide. He joins the French army at the outbreak of WW2 and escapes from a prisoner-of war camp after the bitterly brief fight for France in the summer of 1940. André becomes a spy and saboteur for the British and Free French while working undercover as translator and liaison with the German high command at the Brittany headquarters of the French National Railroads. Summoned by the British, he clandestinely crosses the Channel for initiation and training as an MI6 agent in England. His network betrayed during his absence, he is arrested on his return to France. André then begins an even more perilous journey through interrogations in Gestapo prisons and the little-known Natzweiler concentration camp in Alsace, before being transferred to Dachau and Allach, ahead of the advancing Allies. Many vintage photographs and letters from his agents come to illustrate this heart-pounding story of a debonair young man in a broken world who remade himself as a cunning fighter for freedom.
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Sharaka, a nonprofit advancing the Abraham Accords through people-to-people dialogue, was founded in the wake of the Abraham Accords to foster cooperation and understanding between Israel and its neighbors through direct engagement, advocacy, and education. Sharaka is also a leading organization for Holocaust education in the Arab and Muslim world, bringing participants from across the region to Poland, Germany, and Israel.
Part of their work centers on bringing delegations of Middle Eastern activists, thought leaders, and community organizers to the United States to engage with diverse audiences. These speakers share firsthand perspectives on Holocaust Education in the Middle East, the impact and future of the Abraham Accords, and grassroots peacebuilding.
Sharaka is bringing a panel to the Museum of Jewish Heritage to share a unique and often unheard voice in the United States: moderate, forward-looking, and grounded in peace between people on the ground in the Middle East. They are bringing individuals from each of the Abraham Accords countries: Israel, Bahrain, Morocco, and the UAE, for an important and timely dialogue.
The San Diego Jewish Men's Choir presents an uplifting afternoon of music celebrating Jewish life, tradition and heritage in the Yiddish, Ladino, Hebrew and English languages. Under the direction of Ruth Hertz Weber, this award-winning, and 2-time Top 5 Billboard Charting, group of 25 Jewish guys that sing and dance bring their unique blend of class and schmaltz to the Museum for this one-of-a-kind program. The group's esteemed musicians include Emilia Lopez-Yañez-oboe, Dr. Michael Munson-piano, Doron Peisic-accordion, and Zisl Slepovitch-clarinet.
The Museum's newest exhibition, Art of Freedom: The Life & Work of Arthur Szyk, focuses Szyk's decades-long career during which he emerged as a powerful voice in the fight for freedom, justice, and democracy. Szyk’s stunning works, ranging from intricately detailed illuminated texts like his iconic Haggadah to decisively satirical political cartoons, reveal how creativity can be harnessed to fight for freedom and stand against antisemitism.
Join Irvin Ungar, the world's foremost expert on the art of Arthur Szyk and the tireless force behind the Szyk renaissance, for an opening-day tour of the exhibition.
Frieda Gordon is the child of two Holocaust survivors with incredible tales of cunning, perseverance, incredible bravery and selflessness, who ultimately discovered each other on a death march between Dachau and Auschwitz, where each had been incarcerated for five years. Her father was liberated by the Americans in Dachau and her mother by the British in Bergen-Belson, where she was transferred late in the war from Auschwitz. Both of Frieda’s parents were from Grodno, Poland and survived a combined total of ten death camps.
Frieda will be in conversation with her daughter, Laura Dicterow, about her parents’ story.
In 1943, the German SS officers in charge of Auschwitz-Birkenau ordered that an orchestra should be formed among the female prisoners. Forty-seven women and girls from eleven nations were drafted into a hurriedly assembled band that would play to other inmates as they left each morning and as they returned at the end of the day. They were also made to give weekly concerts for Nazi officers, and members were sometimes summoned to give individual performances of an officer’s favorite piece of music. For almost all of the musicians chosen to take part, the orchestra was to save their lives. But at what cost? Anne Sebba's The Women's Orchestra of Auschwitz tells this story.
Writer, art historian, and Holocaust survivor Suzanne Loebl, whose life paralleled much of the events revisited in Plunder and Survival, takes a new look at the Nazis ruthless attack on modern art and at their unprecedented looting of private, mostly Jewish art collections in Austria, Holland, and France. Eighty-five years after the end of the hostilities, the book examines a sizable fraction of the art that miraculously survived, especially in American art museums. In addition to art, leading artists, art professionals, scholars and architects, fled Hitler’s realm; their contributions to their new homeland helped to shift the center of art world from Europe to the United States.
Suzanne Loebl will be in conversation about the book with Abigail Wilentz.
Plunderer is a feature-length documentary that focuses on the career of Bruno Lohse, a Nazi art dealer who served as Göring’s art agent in Paris and headed the ERR, the Nazis’ clearinghouse for confiscated art in France. Captured and interrogated by the Monuments Men after the war, Lohse served a brief prison sentence. Following his release, he profitably dealt in stolen art for sixty years, selling to collectors, galleries, and major museums. The film includes stories of Holocaust survivors working to reclaim their families’ lost artworks and examines the continuity between the post-war era and the contemporary art world and its secretive culture.
Following the screening, there will be a talkback with producer John Friedman.
In 1942, the Nazis established a unique ghetto/concentration camp outside Prague in an old army garrison known as Terezín, which the Germans renamed Theresienstadt. Terezín was a prison to thousands of scholars, performers, musicians, actors, writers, and philosophers. Overwhelmingly Jewish, these prisoners turned to the arts and humanities as both balm and sword. They performed, created, taught, lectured, and composed not merely as entertainment, but as necessity and nourishment, as critical to staying alive as eating and drinking.
Defiant Requiem highlights the most dramatic example of intellectual and artistic courage: the remarkable story of Rafael Schächter, a brilliant young and passionate Czech opera-choral conductor who was sent to Terezín in 1941. He was determined to sustain courage and hope for his fellow prisoners by enriching their souls through great music. His most extraordinary act was to recruit 150 prisoners and teach them the Verdi Requiem in a dank cellar using a smuggled score over multiple rehearsals, after grueling days of forced labor. The Requiem was performed on sixteen occasions for fellow prisoners. The last, most infamous performance occurred on June 23, 1944. With only sixty prisoner-singers remaining following massive deportations, Schächter was ordered by the Nazi camp commander to perform the Requiem before high-ranking SS officers from Berlin and the International Red Cross to support the myth that the prisoners were well treated and flourishing.
Following the screening of the film, there will be a discussion with Murry Sidlin, Founder, President, and Artistic Director of the Defiant Requiem Foundation.
In 1965 choreographer Anna Sokolow wrote of her work: "I don't believe there is any final solution to the problems of today. All I can do is provoke the audience into an awareness of them."
American modern dance pioneer and Jewish cultural icon, Anna Sokolow (1910-2000) was a dancer and choreographer of uncompromising integrity. She is a very important part of American Jewish culture, though her story is not well known. Anna’s choreography closely reflects her intense commitment to the social, political, and human conflicts of her times. Beginning in the 1930s Sokolow confronted audiences with her radical idea that the common person is worthy of a place on stage. At each decade of her career she re-invented herself, remaining at the cutting edge of unflinching art for more than 70 years.
This lecture demonstration, presented by Samantha Geracht, Artistic Director of the Sokolow Theatre/Dance Ensemble, traces Sokolow’s history and art: from New York City’s Lower East Side, surrounded by the socialist artistic movement flourishing at the time, through her development as a world-renowned modernist choreographer, to her lifelong ties to Israel and its own modern dance roots. Anna Sokolow’s artistic story is intertwined with the American Jewish story of her time.
Dancer/Choreographer Anna Sokolow and Composer Alex North connected as young artists in the midst of the 1930’s Great Depression. Both came from Russian Jewish immigrant families and were committed to the social justice issues of the time, including workers rights and anti-fascism. Their art focused on lifting the spirit of the masses and improving the life of working people. While their careers took off within the atmosphere of the New York City modernist movement, they also traveled to Russia and to Mexico expanding both their artistic education and influence. In 1937, Sokolow premiered Slaughter of the Innocents, her 1937 lament for Basque women suffering under Nazi aerial bombing set to an original score by Alex North.
Samantha Geracht, Artistic Director of the Sokolow Theatre/Dance Ensemble will take the audience through the reconstruction process of this dance, which included a set of photographic proofs and the discovery of the lost North score, while outlining the history of anti-fascist modern dance. Slaughter of the Innocents will be performed by members of the Sokolow Theatre/Dance Ensemble to the original music showcasing the creative collaboration of Anna Sokolow (1910-2000) and Alex North (1910-1991). This piece remains fresh, compelling, and relevant for today's audiences.
Rooms, choreographed by Anna Sokolow with a jazz score by Kenyon Hopkins, examines the psychic isolation and unfulfilled desires of characters isolated in their small, city apartments. The controversial and groundbreaking 1955 work breathes with the loneliness and alienation following the breakdown of wartime solidarity, when the threat of atomic annihilation, the 1952 polio epidemic, and the Red Scare hung like invisible contagions and created a mood of pervasive uncertainty and dread throughout the country. An enduring masterpiece, Rooms still conveys the anxiety and isolation of today.
This event forms part of Carnegie Hall’s United in Sound: America at 250 festival.
In the spirit of Louis Malle’s Au Revoir les Enfants and Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List, the Emmy® Award-winning documentary The Children of Chabannes has been called “a moving record of the unassuming, uncompromising heroism of ordinary people” (New York Times) and “one of the most heartening Holocaust films ever made: splendid, informative and emotionally involving.” (Los Angeles Times).
The Children of Chabannes is the story of how the people in a tiny village in unoccupied France chose action over indifference, and risked their lives and livelihoods to save the lives of 400 Jewish refugee children during World War II. Inspired by a reunion more than 50 years after the war, Lisa Gossels (My So-Called Enemy), and co-director Dean Wetherell, travel to Chabannes with Lisa’s father Peter and uncle Werner (two of the saved children). The film tells the story of how the teachers and townspeople – who believed in the French Revolutionary values of “liberty, equality, and fraternity” – worked with the OSE (Oeuvre de Secours aux Enfants), a Jewish child welfare organization, to shelter, nurture, and educate the children. The Children of Chabannes is not just a story about the past; it is an exploration of moral courage and goodness in the face of evil – of what motivates individuals to take a stand against injustice, bigotry and extremism.
Following the screening, there will be a discussion with Gossels and Wetherell.
A 2025 National Jewish Book Award Finalist that judges described as “reads like a thriller” and winner of Zibby Awards for Best Family Drama & Best Story of Overcoming, Irena’s Gift explores how reckoning with family betrayal, moral complexity, and hidden histories can reframe our identities—and why excavating these truths matters at a time when Jewish identity itself is under scrutiny.
In 1942, in German-occupied Poland, a Jewish baby girl was smuggled out of the Warsaw ghetto in a backpack. That baby, Karen Kirsten’s mother, Joasia, knew nothing about this extraordinary event until she was thirty-two, when a letter arrived from a stranger. She also learned that the parents who raised her were actually her aunt and uncle. Joasia kept the letter hidden from her own daughter, Karen—until an innocent question revealed the truth.
Determined to help heal her mother’s pain, Karen set out to piece together a war-torn history. From the glittering concert halls of interbellum Warsaw to the vermin-infested prison where a Jewish woman negotiates with an SS officer to save her sister’s child, to the author’s upbringing in a Christian home, this is a story of resilience, sacrifice, intergenerational trauma, and the secrets we keep to protect ourselves and those we love.
Karen will be in conversation about her book with award winning author, Professor Robin Judd.
Join us for a compelling online book talk with historian Scott D. Seligman, author of The Great Christmas Boycott of 1906, as he unpacks a dramatic and little known chapter in American Jewish history. Set in New York at the dawn of the twentieth century, this meticulously researched account begins in the winter of 1905-1906 when a Brooklyn elementary school principal urged his Jewish students to be “more like Jesus Christ,” sparking outrage in the community and inspiring mass mobilization. What followed was a citywide boycott of public school Christmas pageants by Jewish families, a protest that triggered an enormous antisemitic backlash and raised urgent questions about religion, identity, and citizenship in the United States.
Seligman’s book details how the Jewish community of New York, led by activist Albert Lucas and backed by Orthodox, Reform, and immigrant voices alike, refused to remain silent. They challenged the public school system, pressured the school board to limit sectarian religious practices in schools, and confronted the backlash head-on. In doing so, they forged a formative model for how American Jews engaged with public schooling, the boundaries of religious expression, and the meaning of belonging.
Explore the rich and complex story of Jewish life in Nuremberg, a city that has played a pivotal role in both Jewish history and modern German identity. This tour traces the presence of the Jewish community from medieval times through periods of growth, persecution, devastation, and today’s ongoing efforts toward remembrance and education.
We’ll reflect on Nuremberg’s connection to the rise of Nazism, the Nuremberg Laws, and the post-war trials that sought justice and set new standards for human rights. As we walk through the historic city center, we’ll focus on the people, places, and stories that shaped Jewish life here, highlighting resilience, cultural influence, and the importance of memory. Along the way, we’ll also take a brief peek at Nuremberg’s world-famous holiday market to soak in a touch of seasonal atmosphere. Co-presented with
Wowzitude.
Experience the spirit of Hanukkah in Jerusalem as we explore the city where the story of this holiday first unfolded. This special tour highlights the Jewish heritage of Jerusalem through the lens of Hanukkah, reflecting on the ancient struggle for religious freedom, the rededication of the Temple, and the enduring symbolism of light over darkness.
We’ll visit meaningful areas of the Old City and discuss the traditions, history, and heart of Hanukkah as it is celebrated in Jerusalem today. Since this tour takes place on the 3rd day / 4th night of Hanukkah, we’ll also enjoy the festive atmosphere that fills the city, including the glow of hanukkiyot in windows, holiday foods, and the sense of joy and community. Co-presented with
Wowzitude.
ASL Tour "Art of Freedom: The Life & Work of Arthur Szyk"
Thursday, March 12th at 6:00 PM
Join us for a Curator and ASL interpreter-led tour of the Museum’s newest exhibition of Szyk’s stunning works, Art of Freedom: The Life & Work of Arthur Szyk hosted at The Museum of Jewish Heritage– A Living Memorial to the Holocaust
Over his decades-long career as an artist, Arthur Szyk emerged as a powerful voice in the fight for freedom, justice, and democracy. As a Polish-born Jew and an immigrant to the United States, he advocated for European Jewry, calling the world to action during the Holocaust while his anti-Nazi illustrations rallied Americans to the war effort.
This program is for deaf adults.
The program is free, but registration is still required.
Light refreshments to follow.
ASL Tour: "What Hate Can Do"
Sunday, December 14th from 12:00 PM- 2:30 PM
Join us for a guided tour of the Museum’s core presentation of Holocaust history, told through personal stories, artifacts, photos, and film—many on view for the first time—connecting global events to the experiences of local survivors. It encourages reflection, builds empathy, and fosters critical thinking about the impact of hatred and the importance of civic responsibility.
This program is for deaf adults.
The program is free, but registration is still required.
Light refreshments to follow.