Yom Hashoah Commemoration

Members of the Hyde Park Jewish community gather for a solemn commemoration of the Holocaust. Our keynote speaker is Holocaust historian Sarah Cushman, and the service is designed and led by Rabbi Kirzane and Cantor Berger with participation by many communal organizations.

Sarah Cushman is the Director of the Holocaust Educational Foundation of Northwestern University (HEFNU) and is a Senior Lecturer in History. Before coming to Northwestern, Cushman served as Head of Educational Programming at the Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Clark and as Director of Youth Education at the Holocaust Memorial and Tolerance Center of Nassau County. Her current book project, Women in Auschwitz, is under contract with Indiana University Press and is based on her dissertation.

Keynote address by Sarah Cushman
Women Prisoners in Auschwitz: An Overview

Professor Sarah Cushman offers an overview of the lives and deaths of women prisoners in Auschwitz – their gendered experiences in the camp and their gendered responses to it, as well as a brief analysis of behavior of “privileged” women prisoners. This talk will address sensitive content, including extreme gender-based violence.

Sarah Cushman is Director of the Holocaust Educational Foundation of Northwestern University and Senior Lecturer in the History Department. Cushman served as Head of Educational Programming at the Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Clark University from 2013-2016 and from 2007-2013, she was Director of Youth Education at the Holocaust Memorial and Tolerance Center of Nassau County (New York). Cushman’s first monograph, Women in Auschwitz, is under contract with the University of Indiana Press. She is co-editor of The Routledge Handbook to Auschwitz-Birkenau, and co-editor in chief of Holocaust Studies: A Journal of Culture and History, as well as co-editor of a new series, Cambridge Elements in Genocide Studies.  Cushman is on the executive committee of  National Higher Education Leadership Consortium of Directors of Centers in Holocaust, Genocide and Human Rights Studies and is a member of the Illinois Holocaust and Genocide Commission.