Screening: “There Were Good People Doing Extraordinary Deeds”- Leo Ullman’s Story and Q&A with Leo Ullman
Sponsored by KCC Holocaust Center
November 16 @ 11:30 am – 1pm
Location: ROTUNDA, Kingsborough Community College
Leo S. Ullman was born in Amsterdam, the Netherlands in July 1939. After surviving WWII as a “hidden child,” as chronicled in his book 796 Days: Hiding as a Child in Occupied Amsterdam During WWII and the documentary There Were Good People Doing Extraordinary Deeds, he came to the U.S. with his family in December 1947 to start a new life. A Harvard and Columbia University graduate, Mr. Ullman practiced law for more than 30 years. With respect to his roots, Mr. Ullman served as a Director of the Anne Frank Center USA for two decades and as its chairman for seven years. He has also served many years as the Chairman of the Foundation for the Jewish Historical Museum of Amsterdam. He and his wife, Kay, have co-sponsored the exhibit “State of Deception: The Power of Nazi Propaganda” of the United States National Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C, for which he has served as a member of its Development Committee.
The screening of There Were Good People Doing Extraordinary Deeds is followed by a Q & A with Leo Ullman.
This event is available online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUgIDyZ0TK8
Hybrid Panel: “From Parent to Child? – Intergenerational Transmission of Hate”
November 9, 2022 @ 3:00 pm – 5:00 pm
Location: ROTUNDA, Kingsborough Community College
Sponsored by the KCC Student Union and Diversity Center
Panelists Kristina DuRocher, author of Raising Racists: The Socialization of White Children in the Jim Crow South (Kentucky University Press, 2011); Elke Weesjes, PI on the ACLS/Mellon foundation funded project “Children of the Klan – Growing up in the American Far Right 1960-2000”; and Jvonne Hubbard, child of the late Grand Dragon of the North Carolina Ku Klux Klan and author of the memoir White Sheets to Brown Babies (2018) will discuss intergenerational transmission of racism, antisemitism, and prejudice in the South. With a focus on the period 1890 to 1939, Kristina Du Rocher will show that the socialization of white children was an essential aspect of the southern community’s efforts to preserve the principles of white supremacy and perpetuate the institutions of Jim Crow. Elke Weesjes will explore the lives of two brothers from Louisiana who came of age during the Civil Rights era and whose father was a founding member of an extremely violent Ku Klux Klan cell known as the Silver Dollar Group. Jvonne Hubbard will talk about her childhood experiences growing up in North Carolina in the 1970s and 1980s and will read from her powerful memoir White Sheets to Brown Babies.
Talks are followed by a Q&A with the panelists. Light snacks and refreshments will be provided.
This panel is available online: https://youtu.be/b9sBD5ilF6Y
Hybrid Talk: “My Father the Klansman: Growing up in the American Far Right”
October 17, 2022 @ 6:00 pm – 7:00 pm
Location: Manzulli, Foundation Hall, Wagner College
Sponsored by Wagner Holocaust Center and Cosponsored with the Wagner Civic Engagement Program
If no one is born a racist, how are they made? This question is central to the oral history project Dr. Elke Weesjes, Research and Programming Director of the Kingsborough Holocaust Center and a visiting assistant professor at Kingsborough Community College (CUNY), is currently working on. Based on a series of interviews with 15 children of Ku Klux Klan members (born between 1945 and 1975), auto/biographies, archival materials, and existing Ku Klux Klan historiography, her project explores what it was like to grow up on the political fringes of American society in the latter part of the twentieth century. In her paper, “My Father the Klansman”, Weesjes examines the lives of two of her respondents. Both renounced their upbringing and left their family and community behind to start a life without racism and antisemitism. She will discuss their childhood experiences growing up in a KKK family, their fraught relationships with their parents, the contrast between the hateful ideology passed down by their parents at home and the moral values taught in school, the extent of social isolation experienced during their childhood, what prompted them to break with their family and community, and how they have fared since then. Her paper ultimately shows how children navigated and negotiated the differences between their home lives and public lives and developed their own views on race and sense of identity.
Talk available online: https://youtu.be/Wr94PydRmDY
Exhibit: “Resist” and “Banned”
September 28 – December 10
Location: KCC Holocaust Center @ Kibbee Library at Kingsborough Community College
With a focus on the Second World War, the exhibit “Resist” explores different forms of resistance in the 20th and 21st centuries. Artifacts range from sheet music, paperclip bracelets and recipes to pink triangle pins, lipstick, and white t-shirts. The exhibit “Banned” displays books that were banned in the 20th and 21st centuries, from Das Kapital and Berlins drittes Geschlecht to The Kite Runner and Gender Queer: A Memoir.
