Thursday, 20 March 2025
12:00 -1:00 p.m. EDT
Join the online discussion ¡°Women in Auschwitz¡± with Dr. Sarah Cushman, Holocaust historian and Director of the Holocaust Educational Foundation of Northwestern University. His Excellency Mr. Krzysztof Szczerski, Permanent Representative of the Republic of Poland to the United Nations will deliver opening remarks.
Left: Jewish women and children from Subcarpathian Rus await selection on the ramp at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Middle: Perla Schwartz, an elderly Jewish woman from Subcarpathian Rus who has been selected for death, waits on the ramp at Auschwitz-Birkenau to be taken to the gas chambers. Right: Jewish women from Subcarpathian Rus who have been selected for forced labor at Auschwitz-Birkenau, march toward their barracks after disinfection and headshaving.
These photographs are part of the "Auschwitz Album", an album of photographs documenting the process leading to the mass murder perpetrated by the Nazis at Auschwitz Birkenau.
Credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Yad Vashem (Public Domain)
Opening Remarks
His Excellency Mr. Krzysztof Szczerski is the Permanent Representative of the Republic of Poland to the United Nations in New York. In 1997 he graduated from the Jagiellonian University with a master¡¯s degree in political science, and in 2001 he obtained his PhD at this university¡¯s Institute of Political Sciences and International Relations. He completed his habilitation (postdoctoral degree) in 2010, based on a dissertation entitled Dynamics of the European System, for which he received the Prime Minister¡¯s Award. In 2018 he was awarded the title of Professor of Social Sciences. Since 2000 he has been an affiliated scholar of the Jagiellonian University, and has twice been Deputy Director of its Institute of Political Sciences and International Relations. He lectured at the National School of Public Administration in 2008-2009 and later in Diplomatic Academy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Since 2013 has been an associate professor at the Jagiellonian University. He was also a member of the Board of the Polish Institute of International Affairs and the Institute for Central Europe. In the years 2007-2008 Mr. Szczerski was Undersecretary of State at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and then at the Office of the Committee for European Integration. He has been a member of the Civil Service Council to the Prime Minister (2009-2010) and a Member of Parliament (Sejm RP) (2011-2015). In January 2015 he was became the representative of the Polish Parliament at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. From 2015 he was Secretary of State at the Chancellery of the President of the Republic of Poland, from 2017 he served as Chief of the Cabinet of the President of the Republic of Poland and later as Head of the International Policy Bureau in the Chancellery.
Speaker
Dr. Sarah Cushman is the Director of the Holocaust Educational Foundation of Northwestern University and Senior Lecturer in the History Department. Dr. 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 as Director of Youth Education at the Holocaust Memorial and Tolerance Center of Nassau County. She earned her PhD from Clark University in 2010. Her first book, Women in Auschwitz, is under contract with the University of Indiana Press. Dr. Cushman is co-editor of the forthcoming Routledge Handbook on Auschwitz-Birkenau, and co-editor in chief of Holocaust Studies: A Journal of Culture and History. She has earned fellowships from the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Holocaust Educational Foundation, and Steven Spielberg. Dr. Cushman is on the executive committee of the National Consortium of Directors of Centers in Holocaust, Genocide and Human Rights Studies and a member of the Illinois Holocaust and Genocide Commission.
Please follow this link to view the responses from Dr. Cushman to the questions that were not addressed during the online discussion due to time constraints.