In honor of the Jewish holiday Yom HaShoa, also known as Holocaust Remembrance Day, Kent State University’s Jewish Studies Program will host “Yom HaShoa: Artists Respond to the Holocaust.” The two-day series of events will take place April 28-29 on the Kent campus.

At 7 p.m. on April 28, there will be a showing of the documentary Weapons of Spirit, and a discussion with the filmmaker, Pierre Sauvage, in the Kiva. The documentary tells the story of a mountain community in France that defied the Nazis and took in and saved five thousand Jews, including Sauvage and his parents. The film received two national prime-time broadcasts on PBS, accompanied by Bill Moyers’ probing 1989 interview of the filmmaker, and remains one of the most widely used documentary teaching tools on the Holocaust.

An Emmy Award-winning documentary filmmaker, Sauvage is president of the Chambon Foundation, which he founded in 1982. The Chambon Foundation was the first nonprofit educational foundation committed to exploring and communicating the necessary and challenging lessons of hope intertwined with the Holocaust’s unavoidable lessons of despair. 

In addition, at 8 p.m. on April 29, the Manchester Dance Ensemble will perform in the Kiva.The Ensemble, under the leadership of Lesa Broadhead, is a pre-professional, not-for-profit company of talented dancers between the ages of 11 and 18. The group and students of Dance Academy South in Akron perform a wide variety of styles, exploring classical ballet, jazz, modern and hip hop styles of dance.

"We're very privileged to have Mr. Sauvage come to Kent State,” says Dr. Richard Steigmann-Gall, director of the Jewish Studies Program. “His film speaks, not simply to the need for awareness, but also the need to act upon that awareness. And Lesa Broadhead's dance ensemble adds an entirely different angle from which to contemplate the human costs of genocide and the social isolation that is its necessary prerequisite." 

For more information, visit http://dept.kent.edu/jewish.