Life Reborn: Jewish Displaced Persons, 1945-1951
Tentative Conference Program
January 14-17, 2000
Washington D.C.

Friday, January 14, 2000

noon - 6 p.m.

Registration

Visits to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (buses not provided)

6 - 7:30 p.m.

Dinner

Welcoming remarks
Sara Bloomfield, Rositta Ehrlich Kenigsberg

Opening address
Miles Lerman

The cost of dinner is not included in the registration fee. Seating will be available for those wishing to attend the program without eating dinner.

7:45 - 10:30 p.m.

Evening Program

Remarks
Romana Primus

The DP Period in History: Framing the Subject of the Conference
Yehuda Bauer

Oyneg Shabes

Personal recollections of a U.S. Army chaplain and a cantor who were in the DP camps
Rabbi Mayer Abramowitz and Cantor Moshe Kraus

Khazones and group singing with song books
Cantor Isaac Goodfriend, Cantor Moshe Kraus, Adrienne Cooper
   

Saturday, January 15, 2000

9 a.m. - 7 p.m.

Visits to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
(buses provided)

Sabbath services available at the hotel

Registration continues

noon - 2 p.m.

Lunch Plenary


Life in the DP Camps: The Special Role of the "Joint"
Johnathan W. Kolker, Michael Schneider, Ted Feder, Isaac Norich and Theodore Comet

Tribute to the memory of Joseph Schwartz

The cost of the lunch plenary is not included in the registration fee. Seating will be available if you wish to attend the program without eating lunch.

2:15 - 3:45 p.m.

Text Study Sessions

In each session, participants will read, analyze and discuss a short text that illuminate an aspect of the Jewish DP experience.

  • Appeal for aid to the American Jewish Community
    Robert L. Hilliard
  • Ben Gurion’s speech to the DPs
    Samuel Norich
  • Directives from the Yishuv to its emissaries
    Dina Porat
  • Editorial from a DP newspaper
    Aron Hirt-Manheimer
  • Faith and observance after the khurbn
    Gershon Greenberg
  • Harrison Report
    Leonard Dinnerstein
  • Holidays and ritual, 1945-46
    Toby Blum Dobkin
  • JDC field reports
    Ted Feder
  • Jewish students in Munich
    Emanuel Tanay
  • Justice
    Joseph Harmatz
  • Landsberger Lagercajtung
    Abraham Peck
  • Selection from the American press
    Ruth Gruber
  • Parshat Bo: Waiting to Enter the Promised Land, a Chaplain and the Bricha
    Mayer Abramowitz
  • Yiddish expository prose (in Yiddish)
     Miriam Isaacs
  • Yiddish poetry (in Yiddish)
    Anita Norich

4:30 - 6:30 p.m.

Receptions (organized by affinity group)

6:30 - 8 p.m.

Dinner

8:15-9:30 p.m.

Evening Program

Address: "Choosing Life: Our Parents, Ourselves"
Samuel Norich

Address:
Congressman Sam Gejdenson

"Nothing Makes You Free:"
Melvin Jules Bukiet

Depiction of the DP in film:
Aviva Kempner
9:45 p.m. - 11 p.m.

Film Screening

Long is the Way

Throughout the conference, movies about the DP era will be shown as videos in a hotel suite adjacent to the meeting rooms.
   

Sunday, January 16, 2000

8:45 - 10:30 a.m.

Morning Plenary


The DP Experience
Michael Berenbaum, Sam E. Bloch, Rabbi Herbert Friedman

10:45 a.m. -
12:30 p.m

Forum 1: Self-Determination

  • After Liberation
    talk by Henry Friedlander, recollections by Abraham Foxman and Tzvi Rosenwein
  • Bergen-Belsen and the British Zone
    talk by Joanne Reilly, recollections by Sam Bloch & Tania Rozmaryn, with photos by Eric Nooter
  • Bricha and Emigration
    talk by Yehuda Bauer, recollections by Mayer Abramowitz & Samuel Ron
  • Child Survivors
    Robert Krell; recollections by George Schwab and Paula Goldberg
  • Italy and Austria
    talk by Yitzhak Kerem, recollections by Jacob Trobe and Hyman Silberstrom
  • Justice
    talks by Dina Porat, recollections by Joseph Harmatz & Boleslaw Brodecki
  • Non-Jewish DPs
    talk by Mark Wyman, recollections by Vladimir Pregelj
  • Self-Government
    talk by Abraham Peck, recollections by Stanley Abramovitch, Marion Pritchard & Kalman Sultanik
  • The U.S. Army, the Germans, and the DPs
    talk by Severin Hochberg, recollections by Rabbi Herbert Friedman, Irving Heymont & Robert L.Hilliard

12:45 - 2:15 p.m.

Lunch Plenary
Remembrance

Remarks
Menachem Rosensaft

Keynote Address
Elie Wiesel


The cost of this meal is included in the registration fee.

2:30 - 4:15 p.m.

Forum 2: Family, Work, and Culture

  • Artistic Creativity
    talks and recollections by Samuel Bak, David Rogow & Henny Durmashkin-Gurko
  • Coping with the Psychological Aftermath of Survival and Extreme Trauma
    talk by Eva Fogelman, recollections by Henry Krystal and Maria Rosenbloom
  • Courtship, Marriage, and Children
    talk by Toby Blum-Dobkin, recollections by Minna Aspler, Regina Spiegel & Donia Gold Schwartzstein
  • Education, Employment and Hakhshara (kibbutz training)
    talk by Jacqueline Giere, recollections by Solomon Goldman & Helen Luksenberg
  • The Multiple Roles of Women
    talk by Margarete Myers Feinstein, recollections by Nesse Godin & Tonia Rotkopf Blair
  • Religious Observance
    talk by Gershon Greenberg, recollections by Rabbi Emanuel Rackman & Cantor Moshe Kraus
  • Sephardim among the DPs
    talk by Yitzhak Kerem

8 - 10:30 p.m.

Sunday Evening Performance and Reception

"L’Chaim"

An evening of music, dramatic readings, and poetry, drawn from the DP period

Performance chair: Rositta Ehrlich Kenigsberg

The Second Generation dedicates this evening to our parents.

Response: Benjamin Meed
   

Monday, January 17, 2000

9:00 - 10:30 a.m.

Morning Plenary


Allied Policy Toward the DPs
Leonard Dinnerstein, David Engel and Joanne Reilly

10:45 a.m. -
12:15 p.m.

Closing Session


Responding to Our Legacy: a panel of children of survivors.
Jean Bloch Rosensaft, Gary Schiller, Thane Rosenbaum, Debbie Teicholz-Guedalia, Elan Steinberg

Closing Remarks
Sara Bloomfield