Events in April–June 2020
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- Online Event: Joel Poznansky on the Coldstream Guards
Online Event: Joel Poznansky on the Coldstream Guards
Online Event: Joel Poznansky on the Coldstream Guards
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April 30, 2020Joel Poznansky is a member of Jewish War Veterans Post 692 in Maryland. You will probably notice he has a strange accent, but he is a proud American citizen and immigrant. Although he was born and grew up in England, his father is Canadian - having immigrated there from Poland in 1936 as a young boy, with his parents and siblings, the only branch of a large family to survive the Holocaust. Joel joined the army after college, as one of a very small number of Jews in the British army at that time, and perhaps the only one to have served in the Coldstream Guards. The reaction of family and friends when he joined up after college was....very mixed, and his parents still hoped until recently he might become a doctor or a lawyer. He will talk about the history of this unique, royal regiment and his service at Sandhurst, in Germany, as part of a NATO mechanized battalion and during the Troubles in Northern Ireland in the 1980’s.
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- Online Event: Bernard Lubran on the Ritchie Boys
Online Event: Bernard Lubran on the Ritchie Boys
Online Event: Bernard Lubran on the Ritchie Boys
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May 7, 2020Bernard Lubran joins us to discuss the soldiers trained in military intelligence at Camp Ritchie, MD during World War II. Many of them were German-speaking immigrants who had fled from the Nazis in Europe.
Bernie Lubran, the son of a Ritchie Boy, is the President of the Friends of Camp Ritchie, an educational non-profit whose purpose is to educate the public about the importance of Camp Ritchie and the soldiers who trained there during World War II, "The Ritchie Boys." See the Facebook page, Ritchie Boys of WWII, where more information can be found about their achievements. Bernie and his wife reside in North Bethesda, MD.
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- Online Event: Blind Bombing with Norman Fine and George Jacobs
Online Event: Blind Bombing with Norman Fine and George Jacobs
Online Event: Blind Bombing with Norman Fine and George Jacobs
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May 14, 2020Author Norman Fine and World War II B-17 Navigator George Jacobs discuss Blind Bombing: How Microwave Radar Brought the Allies to D-Day and Victory in World War II.
Online Event: Blind Bombing with Norman Fine and George Jacobs
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- Online Event: The Hebrew Union Veterans Association and The Shapell Roster, Part I
Online Event: The Hebrew Union Veterans Association and The Shapell Roster, Part I
Online Event: The Hebrew Union Veterans Association and The Shapell Roster, Part I
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June 11, 2020The researchers of the Shapell Manuscript Foundation Roster Project join us on Zoom to discuss Jews in the Civil War and the members of the Hebrew Union Veterans Association (HUVA). HUVA, the progenitor of became the Jewish War Veterans of the U.S.A., was formed in 1896 as an organization for Union veterans.
The Shapell Roster is the first-ever comprehensive data archive documenting the Jewish soldiers who served in the American Civil War.
Over the course of ten years, Shapell Manuscript Foundation researchers unearthed a treasure trove of information on Union and Confederate Jews during the Civil War era, giving life to a buried record of the Jewish-immigrant experience and American patriotism.
Online Event: The Hebrew Union Veterans Association and The Shapell Roster, Part I
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- Online Event: Saving Israel: WWII Aviators in Israel's War of Independence - Boaz Dvir
Online Event: Saving Israel: WWII Aviators in Israel's War of Independence - Boaz Dvir
Online Event: Saving Israel: WWII Aviators in Israel's War of Independence - Boaz Dvir
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June 18, 2020Boaz Dvir joins us on Zoom to discuss his new book Saving Israel: The Unknown Story of Smuggling Weapons and Winning a Nation’s Independence.
As it prepared to ward off an invasion by five well-equipped neighboring armies in 1948, newborn Israel lacked the weapons to defend itself. Enter Al Schwimmer, an American World War II veteran who feared a repeat of the Holocaust. He created factitious airlines, bought decommissioned airplanes from the US War Asset Administration, fixed them in California and New Jersey, and sent his pilots—Jewish and non-Jewish WWII aviators—to pick up rifles, bullets, and fighter planes from the only country willing to break the international arms embargo: communist Czechoslovakia.
Award-winning filmmaker and Penn State University assistant professor Boaz Dvir tells the stories of ordinary people who, under extraordinary circumstances, transform into trailblazers who change the world around them. They include an average inner-city schoolteacher who emerges as a disruptive innovator and a national model (Discovering Gloria); a World War II flight engineer who transforms into the leader of a secret operation to prevent a second Holocaust (A Wing and a Prayer); an uneducated truck driver who becomes a highly effective child-protection activist (Jessie’s Dad); and a French business consultant who sets out to kill former Nazi officer Klaus Barbie and ends up playing a pivotal role in history’s most daring hostage-rescue operation (Cojot).
Online Event: Saving Israel: WWII Aviators in Israel's War of Independence - Boaz Dvir