MIDDLETOWN, Pa. — The Center for Holocaust and Jewish Studies at Penn State Harrisburg will host historian Rebecca Erbelding for a presentation at noon on Thursday, Jan. 25, via webinar. In her talk, titled “Rescue Board: The Untold Story of America's Efforts to Save the Jews of Europe,” Erbelding will discuss the 1944 creation of the War Refugee Board and its attempts to rescue victims of the Nazi regime.
Click here to register for the event.
Erbelding is a historian of American responses to the Holocaust and the author of “Rescue Board: The Untold Story of America’s Efforts to Save the Jews of Europe,” published by Doubleday in 2018, which won the National Jewish Book Award for Writing Based on Archival Material. She served as a historical adviser and an on-camera expert in Florentine Films’ “The U.S. and the Holocaust,” directed by Ken Burns, Lynn Novick and Sarah Botstein, which debuted on PBS in September 2022.
She is an educator, curator and archivist at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and frequently presents on such topics as the War Refugee Board; U.S. immigration policy during the 1930s; and the “Hoecker album,” a photograph album owned by Karl Hoecker, the final adjutant to the commandant of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Her work on the Hoecker album has been adapted into a theatrical production, “Here There are Blueberries,” written by Moisés Kaufman and Amanda Gronich, and developed by the Tectonic Theater Project.
She holds a doctorate in American history from George Mason University.
For additional information, contact the Center for Holocaust and Jewish Studies at chjs@psu.edu.