UC Santa Cruz announces appointment of two faculty to Holocaust studies chair

UC Santa Cruz has announced the appointment of two prominent scholars as co-chairs of the Neufeld-Levin Chair in Holocaust Studies--one of just a handful of endowed chairs in the United States devoted to the examination of the Holocaust.

Selected to hold the chair for the next five years are Murray Baumgarten, a professor of English and comparative literature at UCSC, and Peter Kenez, a professor of history at UCSC. Baumgarten is 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--Baumgarten was born on the boat they took from Vienna to Panama. Kenez, a Holocaust survivor and native of Hungary, is a scholar of the history of Russia and the former Soviet Union. He is currently director of the University of California's Education Abroad Program in Budapest, Hungary, and is the author of a number of books, including Varieties of Fear: Growing Up Jewish Under Nazism and Communism (American University Press, 1995).

The Neufeld-Levin Chair was established by Anne Neufeld Levin, a longtime resident of Santa Cruz and a trustee of the UC Santa Cruz Foundation. Levin herself 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.

In announcing the appointments, Chancellor M.R.C. Greenwood said, "I am pleased to name Professor Baumgarten and Professor Kenez as co-chairs of the Neufeld-Levin Chair. They are highly regarded by colleagues and students alike. I know a thriving program will develop under the direction of these very dedicated and talented scholars."

"Additionally," Greenwood noted, "we are grateful to Anne Levin for establishing this endowed chair. Her gift makes it possible for us to continue and expand on our research, instruction, and documentation of one of the most tragic events of modern times."

"I couldn't, under any circumstances, be more pleased with the selection of Professors Baumgarten and Kenez as co-chairs," said Anne Levin. "It is because of Murray Baumgarten that I considered endowing a chair in Holocaust studies in the first place--his invitation for me to speak in his class planted the seed. I have great admiration for his many accomplishments and his commitment to his field.

"I am equally delighted by the appointment of Professor Kenez, who is himself a Holocaust survivor. It is so important that we hear about this tragedy from those who lived through it, especially from someone like Peter Kenez who is such an outstanding teacher."

For years, Kenez and Baumgarten have co-taught The Holocaust: The Destruction of European Jewry--one of the campus's most popular courses. As part of their five-year plan they will continue to teach the course in alternate years; will bring in two visiting professors to teach undergraduate and graduate courses; will support a one-year graduate fellowship; and plan to end their term with a conference on teaching the Holocaust. Public lectures are planned as is a conference next spring on "Family History and the Holocaust."

A vital aspect of the chair is its interdisciplinary focus. "This is a phenomenon that does not divide up by disciplines. The Holocaust touches on every aspect of European and Nazi society," Baumgarten noted.

An important resource for chairholders will be the Neufeld Family Archive, donated by Levin soon after she endowed the chair. The archive includes documents, medals, stamps, artifacts, photos, memorabilia, and letters, carefully preserved first by her parents and then by Levin. "It is always much more moving to be able to learn the fate of a single individual than talk about generalities. Students are engaged by the concrete, by such real-life stories as this archive relays," Kenez said.

Baumgarten added that, "This is a very rich collection that chronicles the family's life before and during the rise of Nazism. The level of detail in the letters in the Neufeld archive approaches that of some of the most important Holocaust diaries, including Anne Frank's, and it makes for a very unusual and valuable collection." The archive is housed in Special Collections at the University Library and is available for public viewing by appointment.

Levin has been a longtime supporter and volunteer at UCSC. Along with establishing the annual Neufeld-Levin Holocaust Lecture Series in 1994, she is a former president of the UC Santa Cruz Foundation and a current board trustee. She served as co-chair of the Development Committee for the Karl S. Pister Leadership Opportunity Program and as a member of several other groups supporting the university.

Along with editing Judaism, 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.

Kenez has authored a number of books on Soviet history, including Cinema and Soviet Society, 1917-1953 (Cambridge University Press, 1992); and The Birth of the Propaganda State: Soviet Methods of Mass Mobilization, 1917-1929 (Cambridge University Press, 1985). Kenez and Baumgarten are founding faculty of UCSC's Stevenson College.

-BARBARA MCKENNA

9/96