Michigan State University’s Jewish Studies Program is presenting the 15th Annual David and Sarah Rabin Holocaust Memorial Lecture today at 7:00 p.m. at the Kellogg Center Auditorium. Entitled “Oneself as Another: Identification and Mourning in Writing about Victims of the Holocaust“, the lecture will be given by Sarah Rubin Suleiman, C. Douglas Dillon Professor of the Civilization of France and Professor of Comparative Literature at Harvard University.

The presentation is free and open to the public.

April 11, 2007 marked the 62nd anniversary of the liberation of the concentration camp Buchenwald, in which 900 children and youths were freed. To mark the event, the Jewish Studies Program and James Madison College presented a lecture on Wednesday given by professor and Jewish Studies faculty member, Kenneth Waltzer, entitled “The Rescue of Children and Youths at Buchenwald” at 7:00 p.m. in Case Hall.
Waltzer said that over the years, he has developed an interest in Buchenwald and has studied its liberation at length concentrating heavily on the topic of rescue; a topic which has been largely ignored.
“No one wanted to supplement the main story – mass murder - for the sub story – rescue,” he said. “For many survivors there was a rescue story.”
Among the 900 boys rescued, 85% were between the ages of 13 and 17, 15% were under 12 and the two youngest boys freed were three and four. Among these boys was famed “Night” author Elie Wiesel and current Israeli presidential candidate Israel Meir Lau.
Waltzer said he believes there was more to the rescue than pure altruism; there were political motivations which played into it as well. The big question which needs to be addressed, he said, is why were there 900 boys left alive to be liberated in the first place?
In his research of reviewing documents and interviewing survivors, Waltzer found evidence to suggest that communists had vested interests in the liberation and had played an instrumental role in the process.
Waltzer presented some of this evidence in the form of photographs. One photo showed plain clothed men in berets leading the boys out of the camp while U.S. General Patton’s Third Army who supposedly liberated the camp, were pictured standing alongside the boys observing the action.
Waltzer also said there were documents which indicated underground communists and political prisoners in the camp controlled who lived and who died, citing transport lists with names crossed out, records of extra food and clothing being distributed in certain barracks and even schooling in two of the blocks.
Waltzer said to this day the concentration camp system is still a “black box” due to the secrecy surrounding its operations.
Lasting two hours, the presentation was a brief summary of Waltzer’s book-in-progress also entitled “The Rescue of Children and Youths at Buchenwald.”

Robert Fisk, Middle East correspondent of the British newspaper The Independent, visited Michigan State University at 3pm on Monday to deliver a lecture about the state of affairs in the Middle East as well as to promote his recent novel, The Great War for Civilisation.
The lecture was the second in a three-part series, “Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine: Patterns of War and Peace in the Middle East” sponsored by MSU’s Muslim Studies Program.
Fisk is a highly-decorated journalist, having received the British Press Awards’ International Journalist of the Year award seven times. The New York Times referred to Fisk as “probably the most famous foreign correspondent in Britain.” He has over 30 years’ experience in international reporting and has lived in the Middle East almost as long.
During the lecture, Fisk warned Israel against any illusions it may have about its adversaries. “Don’t be romantic about Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad or any other opponents,” he said, declaring, “they are not romantic people.”
He went on to criticize Britain and the United States for their attitude toward Israel and other countries in the Middle East. “I don’t think we care about Iraqis or any of the people in the Middle East, not even the Israelis,” he said, adding “and we should.”