Events Calendar

Product Description

Thursday 25 August
6:30pm

$10 – pay at the door RSVP essential

Professor Michael Berenbaum presents  Face to Face with Death: The Sonderkommando – A Matilda Simons Memorial Lecture

Professor Berenbaum will discuss the role, the task, the humanity and the coping skills of the Sonderkommando, those men who worked – often only for a brief time – in the gas chambers and crematoria.

Who were these Sonderkommando? How did they handle their task? What can we learn from their testimony about the killing process, about the humanity of the victims and about those selected for the most gruesome of tasks.

Michael Berenbaum is Director of the Sigi Ziering Institute and Professor of Jewish studies at the American Jewish University in LA. He was formerly the Project Director overseeing the creation of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC and the President and CEO of the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, which took the testimony of 52,000 survivors in 32 languages and 57 countries.

The author and editor of 22 books, he was the Executive Editor of the 22 volume sixteen million word Second Edition of the Encyclopedia Judaica, which was named the outstanding research work of 2006. His work in film has earned him an Emmy Award and he has been the Executive Producer, Producer,  interviewee and historical consultant to scores of films, three of which have earned Academy Awards.