21st Annual Belin Lecture in American Jewish Public Affairs Playing the Blame Game: American Jews Look Back at the Holocaust Deborah Lipstadt, Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish History and Holocaust Studies, Emory University Wednesday, March 16, 2011, 7pm Palmer Commons, Forum Hall, 100 Washtenaw Avenue Over the years since World War II, scholars and popular writers have closely analyzed Franklin D. Roosevelt's policies regarding the rescue of European Jewry during the Holocaust. Most have severely criticized FDR while others have defended him and his policies. This lecture will explore to what degree these analyses have become intertwined with contemporary issues facing the Jewish community. After tracing both the scholarly and popular historiography of America and the Holocaust, we will ask: when are we reading history and when is history being used as a metonym for what is really a conversation about contemporary political issues facing the Jewish community? When is this conversation about the 1930s and 1940s and when is it really about what is happening in the 21s1 century? With the publication of Arthur Morse's While Six Million Died: A Chronicle ofAmerican Apathy in 1967, American Jews began to recognize that there were grounds to criticize the policies of the Roosevelt administration for "failing" to rescue European Jews during the 1930s and 1940s. (There had been, of course, criticism during the war by such groups as the Bergson Boys but in the postwar period this critical approach had been muted.) Morse's popular account was followed by serious historical studies by Henry Feingold (The Politics of Rescue), David Wyman (Paper Walls, The Abandonment of the Jews) and Richard Breitman and Alan M. Kraut (American Immigration Policy and European Jewry 193345). Most of these authors criticized to varying degrees American immigration policy and the behavior of the American Jewish community Beginning in the 1990s, a "pushback" of sorts evolved with strong briefs penned in defense of the Roosevelt administration. Authors such as W.D. Rubenstein (The Myth of Rescue) and Robert Rosen (Saving Jews: Roosevelt and the Holocaust) argued the White House did absolutely everything that could have been done and that its policies resulted in saving countless lives. Finally, most recently, a third "school of thought" has made its voice heard. It emanates, not just from scholars, but from the ranks of the American Jewish community. It is harshly critical of Roosevelt and those Jews who supported him (the vast majority of American Jews voted for FDR in all four presidential elections) and argues that they could have saved multitudes of Jews but did not because they were uncomfortable with the "type" of Jew who would be saved. This school of thought claims that these American Jewish supporters of Roosevelt did not want "those kinds of Jews" here in America. Rather than analyze who is "right" and who is "wrong" about the Roosevelt administration, this lecture asks to what degree are these debates a metonym for more contemporary issues. In other words, when American Jews severely criticize or defend FDR and his policies are they talking about FDR or, in reality, are they talking about contemporary issues? Voices of the Italian Holocaust: A Recital of Vocal Music Sunday, January 30th, 2011, 5 pm Britton Recital Hall, Moore Buildhig Soprano Caroline Helton and pianist Kathryn Goodson, who recently released their first CD of solo vocal music by Jewish composers, Voices of the Holocaust, will be performing a new program of music exclusively by Italian Jewish composers. With the help of Italian musicologist Aloma Bardi, Helton and Goodson have prepared a program that displays these composers' astonishing stylistic variety in the period before and during World War II. . "It is an extreme privilege to have my very own personal musi- cologist, Aloma Bardi, finding these gems for Kathryn and me to perform," explains Helton. "Given the state of publishing and archives in Italy after World War II, music by obscure composers (made all the more obscure by the fact they were Jewish) is terribly difficult to find. Aloma actually found a piece that was thought to be lost Vocalise (Chant Hebraigue) in our own Library of Con- gress. Not only has Aloma done years of research, but she has also matched the repertoire to my voice, so that Kathryn and I were able to compile a musically diverse program very easily out of the pieces she provided us." The pieces on the program have very rarely been performed in Italy. The recital will mark the American premiere of many of them, including Mario Castelnuovo's Vocalise (Chant Hebraigue), which until recently was believed to be lost. The texts are variously drawn from the great Italian poets Dante, Giosue Carducci, and Giacomo Leopardi, as well as the French Jewish poet Max Jacob. Irving Penn, "Ballet Society," New York, 1948. Left to right: Corrado Cagli, Vittorio Rieti, Tanaquil Le Clercq and George Balanchine, National Gallery ofArt "Each composer represented on this program has a completely unique voice in his harmonic vocabulary, piano writing and text setting," Helton continues. "The subject matter ranges from the most lighthearted settings of folk tunes in the Piedmontese dialect (spoken by Primo Levi) to the most profound poetry by beloved Italian masters.."