Lajos Cséri (name at birth Lajos Klein) was born on January 22, 1928 in Hajdúböszörmény, Hungary, in a secular Jewish family. Lajos had a brother, Gyula, and a sister, Anna. He attended a Protestant school in Sárrétudvari, where he spent most of his childhood.

Danielle Willard-Kyle is a PhD candidate in History at Rutgers University. She earned her BA in History from Westmont College, an MA in History and Jewish Studies from the University of Toronto, and an MSt in Jewish Studies from Oxford University before coming to Rutgers.

Ayşenur Korkmaz is a PhD candidate in European Studies at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Korkmaz earned her BA in History from Istanbul Bilgi University, Turkey and her MA in Nationalism Studies from the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary.

Howard Cwick was born in the Bronx, New York, on August 25, 1923, to Samuel and Sarah Cwick, both Polish immigrants. Howard had an older sister, Sylvia. The
Cwick family spoke both English and Yiddish, kept a kosher home, and attended synagogue three times a week. Howard went to school at P.S. 100 in the Bronx before
going on to Brooklyn Technical High School. When he was seven years old, Howard received his first camera and became interested in photography.

Dr. Polatel received his PhD in Modern Turkish History from Boğaziçi University in Istanbul, Turkey in 2017 with his dissertation “Armenians and the Land Question in the Ottoman Empire, 1870-1914.” His research interests include mass violence, state-society relations, the dispossession of Armenians and the late Ottoman Empire. Prior to receiving his PhD, he earned a BA in International Relations from the University of Ankara in 2007 and an MA in Comparative Studies in History and Society from Koç University, Istanbul in 2009.

Maël LeNoc is a PhD Candidate in Geography at Texas State University. He holds undergraduate degrees in History and Geography from Rennes 2 University in France, and a Master’s degree in Geography from Texas State University, for which he received Outstanding Master’s Thesis Award in Digital Scholarship from the Conference of Southern Graduate School. LeNoc co-authored three scholarly publications, presented at a number of conferences, and received many fellowships.

Simon Drucker was born in 1924 in Paris, France, in a Jewish family of Polish origin. His parents, Abraham and Thérèse, left Poland in 1921. Simon had a younger
brother, Isidore. Engaged in the French Foreign Legion during the outbreak of the war, Abraham was arrested in June 1942 and deported first to Pithiviers, and later to Auschwitz, where he was murdered.

Ioanida Costache is a PhD Candidate in Music at Stanford University. She earned her BA in Music (magna cum laude) from Amherst College. Her thesis on Gustav Mahler’s musical ontology in Das Lied von der Erde won the Mishkin Prize for best senior thesis on a musical topic. Her work has recently been published in Critical Romani Studies, and she is the recipient of a number of fellowships and grants, including ASEEES Dissertation Research Grant and Fullbright U.S.

Paul Engel was born into a middle-class Jewish family on May 4, 1922 in Vienna, Austria. He had a younger brother, Robert. When World War I broke out in 1914, his father, Eduard, was drafted into the Austro-Hungarian army. Captured as a prisoner of war, he spent six years in Siberia working in a coal mine, finally reuniting with his family in 1920. In Vienna, Eduard owned a perfume wholesale business. Before the war, Paul attended a primary school and was accepted to a Gymnasium in the 14th district of Vienna.

A public lecture by Anna Lee (USC undergraduate, English major, Spanish and TESOL minor)
2019 Beth and Arthur Lev Student Research Fellow 

Deaths by guns is not unique anymore in American contemporary culture. And mass executions by guns were prevalent during the Holocaust and the Rwandan genocide. In America today, mass shootings, particularly in schools, have caused devastation.