Maurice Greenberg Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Hartford, Sobibor Documentation Project, Sobibor, Poland
Targum Shlishi is supporting the Sobibor Documentation Project, an initiative underway this summer and fall to document archaeological excavations of the long-buried former Nazi extermination camp in Sobibor, Poland. The Nazis concealed the camp and destroyed camp records after the revolt and escape of 365 Jews in October 1943. Targum Shlishi’s support is being used to document the archaeological excavations. Funds are also being raised to produce a documentary about Sobibor. Footage of the archeological excavation will be made available for scholarly use through the Maurice Greenberg Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Hartford (Connecticut) and will be posted online at hartford.edu/greenberg and jewishhistory.com. A conference on the Sobibor Documentation Project, sponsored in part by Targum Shlishi, will take place on October 26, 2008 at the University of Hartford and feature talks by scholars involved in the project.
Targum Shlishi and Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Israel Office, Operation Last Chance: Rewards for Justice (Update),Jerusalem
Operation Last Chance is a joint project of Targum Shlishi and the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Israel Office. Launched in July 2002, the campaign offers financial rewards of $10,000 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of Nazi war criminals. The program has been launched in nine countries: Germany, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Poland, Romania, Austria, Croatia, and Hungary. As of July 2008, the Wiesenthal Center has received the names of 503 suspected war criminals, of which 99 were submitted to local prosecution authorities. The information yielded dozens of investigations in many different countries and six very solid cases which have led to the issuing of three arrest warrants and two extradition requests. In addition to receiving significant media attention worldwide, Operation Last Chance was recently cited in a U.S. Senate bill, the World War II War Crimes Accountability Act of 2008. Introduced by Senators Bill Nelson (D-FL) and Gordon Smith (R-OR), the bill urges the U.S. to actively encourage foreign countries to extradite and prosecute the remaining Nazi war criminals.
David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, Conference Activity, Washington, D.C.
Targum Shlishi supported the organization’s presentation at the Organization of American Historians in March 2008. Titled “New Research on America’s Response to Nazism and the Holocaust,” the session discussed recent scholarship on American responses to the rise of Nazism, including the relationship between Columbia University and Nazi German in the 1930s. Additionally, Targum Shlishi is helping support They Spoke Out: American Voices for Rescue from the Holocaust, the Wyman Institute’s national conference on September 21, 2008.
Targum Shlishi, A Race Against Death Book Distribution (Update), Miami
In 2007 Targum Shlishi conducted an informational campaign to publicize the story of the Bergson Group, also known as the Emergency Committee to Save the Jewish People of Europe, a grassroots, 1940s political action committee that advocated for the United States to take action to rescue the Jews under Hitler. Targum Shlishi sent copies of the book A Race Against Death: Peter Bergson, America, and the Holocaust by David S. Wyman and Rafael Medoff to 1,500 individuals. This effort was undertaken in the hope that the book would motivate people to address the monumental problems facing the Jewish world at this critical time, including the threat of a nuclear Iran. In addition, this effort extended the arguments then being made by the Wyman Institute advocating that Bergson’s contribution be recognized by the United States Holocaust Museum. In late 2007, the Museum agreed to change its permanent exhibit to acknowledge the rescue work of the Bergson Group.