March 21, 2019
Since it opened in 1993, millions of people have visited the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. How does their experience compare to that of visitors to other Holocaust museums, such as the Yad Vashem in Jerusalem or the Jewish Museum Berlin? Jennifer Hansen-Glucklich (University of Mary Washington) is the author of Holocaust Memory Reframed: Museums and the Challenges of Representation. Amy Milligan's (Old Dominion University) research on marginalized Jewish voices has taken her to some unexpected places. But even Milligan was surprised to find herself in Selma, Alabama, a city known more for civil rights than for synagogues. Later in the show: Commodore Uriah Phillips Levy, the first Jewish American to reach that rank in the United States Navy, is also an unsung hero of U.S. history. Melvin Urofsky (Virginia Commonwealth University) says Levy rescued Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello from ruin. The “Golem” is a fictional creature of Jewish legend. David Metzger (Old Dominion University) says it was also the inspiration for The Sorcerer’s Apprentice and Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein.
