UMD News Releases

Keynote Lecture April 20

In celebration of its tenth anniversary, the UMD Baeumler-Kaplan Holocaust Commemoration Committee will sponsor a series of events addressing the Holocaust. The highlight of this year's program features Painter Samuel Bak, who will present a lecture titled "Return to Vilnius" on Tuesday, April 20 at 4:00 p.m. in the Kirby Ballroom.

In conjunction with this lecture, Bak's work will be featured in a standing art exhibit of contemporary artists whose works address Holocaust awareness themes. This exhibit, including works by Graphic Artist Art Spiegelman, Photographer Debbie Teicholz and Installation Artist Ellen Rothenberg, will be on display at the UMD Tweed Museum of Art from April 13-June 13, 2004.

Samuel Bak had his first exhibition of his drawings at the age of nine in the Vilna Ghetto. Escaping after its destruction, he found himself in the DP Camps in post-war Germany. He writes: "Shortly after the occupation of Vilna by the Wehrmacht, both of my grandfathers were taken to the Ponari forest and there they were shot, together with other Jews. On the following Yom Kippur holiday, both of my grandmothers were also taken to this forest. My father was shot by the Nazis a few days before the liberation of Vilna. I don't know how, of all people, my mother and I were selected by fate to survive the liquidation of the ghettos and the labor camps and the various hiding places in which we kept ourselves concealed during the German occupation. I feel the necessity to remember and take it upon myself to bear witness to the things that happened in those times, so that human beings today and those of tomorrow, if it were only possible, are spared a similar destiny on earth. So I have chosen the way of creating images of a seeming reality, imbuing them with a multitude of layers, from clear and unknown symbols to the most private and intimate feelings of a world that has its own apparent logic. I hope that the complexity of these paintings might go beyond my private story and beyond the vicissitudes that mark the Jewish people and their fate."

Bak emigrated to Israel, where he studied at the Bezalel Art School in Jerusalem. Bak, who has resided in Paris, Lausanne, Rome and New York, now lives in the Boston area. He has had numerous solo exhibitions of his work at galleries and in museums in the United States, Israel and Europe.

Listed below is a complete list of Baeumler-Kaplan Holocaust Commemoration events and programs.

2004 Baeumler-Kaplan Holocaust Commemoration Calendar:

All events are free and open to the public

Thursday, April 8 at 12 noon: Gallery talk on Samuel Bak and Holocaust Art

• Drs. Alexis Pogorelskin & Deborah Petersen-Perlman
• Tweed Museum of Art Lecture Gallery

Thursday, April 15 at 7:00 p.m.: Presentation on Holocaust Memorials

• Dr. Stephen Feinstein, the University of Minnesota's Director of the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies on the Twin Cities campus.
• Tweed Museum of Art Lecture Gallery.

Sunday, April 18 at 7:00 p.m.: Film

• "There Once Was a Town," a documentary film about a small village in Lithuania called Eishyshok whose Jewish citizens were nearly exterminated.
• UMD Bohannon Hall room 90. A panel discussion will follow the film.

Tuesday, April 20 at 4:00 p.m.: Keynote Lecture

• Painter Samuel Bak will speak on his "Return to Vilnius".
• UMD Kirby Ballroom.

Wednesday, April 21 at 6:00 p.m.: Art & Design Lecture

• Ellen Rothenberg will present a lecture on her Anne Frank Installation.
• Tweed Museum of Art Lecture Gallery.

Thursday, April 22 at noon: Alworth "Brown Bag" Presentation

• "'Push Me Toulec!' - How eight adults and three children survived the Nazi Holocaust." Mr. Max Herbach recounts his family's "great escape".
• UMD Kirby Ballroom A.

For more information on Baeumler-Kaplan Holocaust Commemoration events, see http://www.d.umn.edu/cla/holocaust/ or contact Deborah Petersen-Perlman at:
phone: 726-6849 or 726-7528
fax: 726-7505
email: dpeters1@d.umn.edu