Ithaca College

On Wednesday, October 30, at 7:30 pm in Emerson A, Professor Richard Breitman of American University will speak on " FDR and the Jews: Before the War and the Holocaust."

Professor Breitman’s talk focuses on President Roosevelt’s initiatives to get Jews out of Germany and Austria in the 18 months before war broke out in Europe in 1939.

Nearly seventy-five years after World War II, a contentious debate lingers over whether Franklin Delano Roosevelt turned his back on the Jews of Hitler’s Europe. In FDR and the Jews, Richard Breitman and Allan J. Lichtman find that the president was neither savior nor bystander. Using new primary sources, they offer an portrait of a consummate politician—compassionate but also pragmatic—struggling with opposing priorities under perilous conditions. Professor Breitman, who teaches at American University, is best known for The Architect of Genocide: Himmler and the Final Solution and Official Secrets: What the Nazis Planned, What the British and Americans Knew.

The annual Holocaust Lecture is sponsored by the Jewish Studies Program at Ithaca College and is supported by the Golberstein Jewish Studies Fund. For more information, please contact Rebecca Lesses, Coordinator of Jewish Studies, at rlesses@ithaca.edu or (607) 274-3556.

Individuals with disabilities requiring accommodations should contact Kim Wojtanik at kwojtanik@ithaca.edu or (607) 274-3409. We ask that requests for accommodations be made as soon as possible.