April 24, 1997 Contact: Barbara McKenna (408) 459-2495; mckenna@ua.ucsc.edu

MEDIA ADVISORY Yom Hashoah events planned at UC Santa Cruz and Temple Beth El

What: Yom Hashoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day) takes place this year on Sunday, May 4. Special events are planned at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and at Temple Beth El in Aptos in commemoration of the day.

Observances will begin at UCSC with an academic conference, featuring leading Holocaust scholars from around the country. Following will be an investiture ceremony to seat two professors in the recently established Neufeld-Levin Holocaust Endowed Chair. Observances will conclude with an evening of prayer and performances at Temple Beth El in Aptos. All events are free and open to the public.

For more information on UCSC events, media may contact Barbara McKenna at (408) 459-2495; the public may contact UCSC's Humanities Division at (408) 459-2696. For more information on temple events, media may contact Mildred Pechman at (408) 688- 7140. The public may call the temple at (408) 479-3444. When and where: Sunday, May 4 Conference: "Family Histories and the Holocaust" 10 A.M. to 3:45 P.M. Stevenson College, UCSC (see attached schedule)

Investiture ceremony: Neufeld-Levin Holocaust Endowed Chair 4 to 4:30 P.M. Stevenson Fireside Lounge, UCSC

Yom Hashoah services and performance by Jeff Raz 7:30 to 10 P.M. Temple Beth El, 3055 Porter Gulch Rd., Aptos (see additional information, below) Photo opportunities: Reporters, camera crews, and photographers are invited to attend the investiture ceremony. The brief program includes comments by Rabbi Richard Litvak of Temple Beth El, UCSC Chancellor M.R.C. Greenwood, Anne Neufeld Levin, and Professors Murray Baumgarten and Peter Kenez. Yom Hashoah: Yom Hashoah was established to commemorate the 6 million victims of the Holocaust. Although the commemoration was initiated in Israel, it is observed around the world. Yom Hashoah takes place on the 27th day of Nissan on the Jewish calendar.

Temple Beth El Program: The evening temple program begins with opening prayer, meditation, and music by Rabbi Richard Litvak, Cantor Paula Marcus, Stephanie Gelman- Peck, and Aaron Miller. Following will be a performance of Father-Land by Jeff Raz, artist-in-residence at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. His one-man show on the long-term ramifications of the Holocaust opened in 1990 at the Solo Mio Festival in San Francisco. Since then, he has toured the show to numerous theatres and synagogues. The show was described by Billboard magazine as a "tale with deftly drawn characters. . . lyrically evocative juggling. . . a little physical shtick . . . and a lot of truth." UCSC Executive Vice Chancellor Michael Tanner will make closing remarks. A reception hosted by Anne and Paul Levin follows. For more information on temple events, media may contact Mildred Pechman at (408) 688-7140. The public may call the temple at (408) 479-3444.

Neufeld-Levin Holocaust Endowed Chair: Established in May 1995, the Neufeld-Levin Chair is one of just a handful of endowed chairs in the United States devoted to the examination of the Holocaust. In September 1996 Professors Murray Baumgarten and Peter Kenez were named chairholders for the next five years. The chair was endowed by Anne Neufeld Levin of Santa Cruz with the purpose of supporting teaching, research, and public service for the study of the Holocaust. The May 4 conference is one of the activities supported by the chair.

Murray Baumgarten: Baumgarten is a professor of English and comparative literature at UCSC and the editor of Judaism, a national journal of Jewish scholarship, culture, religion, and history. He has done extensive research and published works on the Holocaust and on modern Jewish writers. Baumgarten's parents fled from Hitler's troops in 1938 and he was born on the boat they took from Vienna to Panama. Baumgarten is the founding director of the Dickens Project, an international group based at UCSC. He has studied and written on Victorian culture and Dickens as well as Jewish culture, religion, and art and the portrayal of Jews in the works of Charles Dickens and other Victorian writers. He is editor of an eight- volume edition (in progress) of the works of Thomas Carlyle.

Peter Kenez: Kenez is a professor of history at UCSC. A Holocaust survivor and native of Hungary, he is a scholar of the history of Russia and the former Soviet Union. He recently completed work as director of the University of California's Education Abroad Program in Budapest, Hungary. Kenez is the author of Varieties of Fear: Growing Up Jewish Under Nazism and Communism and a number of books on Soviet history, including Cinema and Soviet Society, 1917-1953; and The Birth of the Propaganda State: Soviet Methods of Mass Mobilization, 1917-1929.

Anne Neufeld Levin: Levin is a resident of Santa Cruz and a trustee of the UC Santa Cruz Foundation. She narrowly escaped Nazi persecution when, at the age of three, she fled from Austria with her parents, Henry and Hedy Neufeld, just as Hitler's troops invaded Czechoslovakia in 1939. Levin is a longtime supporter and volunteer at UCSC. In addition to endowing the chair, she also donated a body of Holocaust-related materials to establish the Neufeld Family Archive. The archive includes family documents, medals, stamps, artifacts, photos, memorabilia, and letters, many of which document a personal history of the Holocaust. A former president of the UC Santa Cruz Foundation, Levin also established the annual Neufeld-Levin Holocaust Lecture Series in 1994. She served as cochair of the Development Committee for the Karl S. Pister Leadership Opportunity Awards Program and as a member of several other groups supporting the university.

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