On Monday, April 10 Rebecca Erbelding, an archivist, curator, and historian at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, will present the keynote presentation for Americans and the Holocaust, a traveling exhibition from the Washington, D.C. museum.
How Did Young Americans Respond to the Holocaust? starts at 6:00 p.m., and parking is available at no charge in the liberal arts lot near the corner of University Dr and Theatre Ln. The exhibit is on display at Boise State University’s Albertsons Library through April 26. Additional programming is featured at the library over the next several weeks.
Erbelding’s first book, Rescue Board: The Untold Story of America’s Efforts to Save the Jews of Europe, won the National Jewish Book Award for writing based on archival sources. She was recently featured in the 2022 PBS documentary The U.S. and the Holocaust, directed by Ken Burns, Lynn Novick and Sarah Botstein.
Albertsons Library is one of 50 libraries nationwide selected to host Americans and the Holocaust. The exhibit explores the motives, pressures and fears that shaped Americans’ responses to Nazism, war and genocide in Europe during the 1930s and 1940s. The content challenges the commonly held assumptions that Americans knew little and did nothing about the Nazi persecution and murder of Jews as the Holocaust unfolded.
Erbelding will appear on Boise Public Radio’s Idaho Matters Monday, April 10 at noon with Gwyn Hervochon, librarian/archivist at Albertsons Library. Hervochon is managing the exhibition and working with community partners to create the lectures and events. Additional funding for the exhibit was provided by Boise State’s concurrent enrollment program. Email Hervochon at gwynhervochon@boisestate.edu with any questions.