In the safe haven of Colleyville, Texas, on January 15, 2022, Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker and three others find themselves hostages when a stranger disrupts a typical Saturday morning at Congregation Beth Israel Synagogue. Directed by award-winning filmmaker Dani Menkin, this gripping real-life drama documentary unfolds over an 11-hour standoff, testing their resilience and courage in unimaginable ways.
University of Southern California
Doheny Memorial Library
Room 240
Los Angeles, CA 90089
United States
As Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany traveled throughout the colonial and quasi-colonial Global South, they encountered highly diverse local populations and authorities. Always shadowed by the emerging European catastrophe, uprooted Jews were also precariously privileged as white Europeans in non-western, colonial, or semi-colonial societies.
What did children growing up in New York, Buenos Aires, or Montreal need to know about the events that came to be referred to as “the (third) Destruction?” The secularist-Yiddishist world and its trusted teachers felt they lacked the dubious luxury of waiting for some developmentally optimal moment: the wreckage was all around them.
Musicians from the University of Southern California (USC) marching band played a spirited musical flourish as shiny streamers wafted down. It was a fitting welcome to the May 6 ceremony recognizing Mickey Shapiro’s transformative $30 million gift to the USC Shoah Foundation. In honor of the gift, the Foundation’s headquarters was named the Mickey Shapiro Headquarters of the USC Shoah Foundation.
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath to be present in the living room of my grandparents’ home, awaiting a conversation with my great-grandmother, Mary Antekelian.