A Holocaust Survivor Shares His Story
By Raymond Polak
Date & time: Wednesday, April 15, 2026 at noon via webinar
Raymond Polak is a child Holocaust Survivor who was born in France in 1943 – in the middle of World War II.
Raymond’s mother, Henni Elter, and his grandmother had been transported to Gurs, a concentration camp in the south of France. There Raymond’s mother met his father, Arthur “Turl” Schnierer, an Austrian Jew who had been captured in Belgium by the Nazis.
Turl was involved in the French Resistance against the Nazis. He was in charge of food distribution in Gurs and saved many lives. Because of Turl’s connection with the French Resistance, he was alerted that he and Henni would soon be sent to Auschwitz. They were able to escape, and Turl continued to work in the resistance. However, he was eventually captured by the Gestapo. After being questioned and tortured, he was sent to Auschwitz and then to Buchenwald. Regrettably, as a result of the terrible treatment he suffered at the hands of the Gestapo and in Auschwitz, Turl died shortly after the liberation of Buchenwald.
Raymond’s mother, who lived to 94, did not share her story with him until he was in his 40s. Ever since, he has spoken out against anti-semitism and shared the admirable and courageous lives of his mother and father.
SHARP Dance Company (Philadelphia)
Date & time: April 23, 7:30 pm
Location: Kulkarni Theater
SHARP Dance Company (Philadelphia) will perform Stories, The Journey, Fate, and the signature skirt trio Blind Faith, alongside 669, honoring Sir Nicholas Winton and the 669 children he helped rescue. 50 to 55 minutes, followed by a talkback with Artistic Director Diane Sharp-Nachsin and the company.
PSU tickets are $5
Antisemitism, an American Tradition
By Pamela S. Nadell, PhD.
Date & time: Friday, May 1, 2026 at noon via webinar
Bio
Professor Pamela S. Nadell holds the Patrick Clendenen Chair in Women’s and Gender History at American University. Her book America’s Jewish Women: A History from Colonial Times to Today won the 2019 National Jewish Book Award’s Everett Family Foundation “Book of the Year”. A past president of the Association for Jewish Studies, she is a consultant to Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life museum, has testified multiple times before Congress, and lectures widely. In this talk, she will discuss her most recent book, Antisemitism: An American Tradition, which scrupulously investigates how the persistence of old ideas about “evil Jews,” alongside new, antisemitic conspiracy theories and lies, have circulated throughout American history. Writing “with command and a detective’s sense for where buried episodes of antisemitism can be found” (Franklin Foer, author of The Last Politician: Inside Joe Biden’s White House and the Struggle for America’s Future), Nadell reveals how hatred against Jews in America has continuously threaded its history, exposing that antisemitism in the United States is not an irregularity, but a tradition.