Holocaust survivor Emanuel (Manny) Mandel will be the featured speaker at the 13th annual Kansas Wesleyan University Holocaust Remembrance and Genocide Awareness.
The event is scheduled for 7 p.m. April 10 in Sams Chapel.
Mandel will share his experiences as a Jewish child living in Hungary during the Nazi period. He was eight years old when Nazi Germany occupied Hungary in 1944. His father was forced into a labor gang and Mandel, his mother and brother were sent to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany.
They remained there for six months and were among a fortunate group traded by the Nazis to the Jewish Rescue and Relief Committee in exchange for trucks and other goods. The family moved to the U.S. in 1949, settling in Philadelphia and becoming American citizens.
Mandel eventually became a practicing psychotherapist in Maryland until his retirement in 2014. His visit is courtesy of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
A meet-and-greet will follow the presentation in the Brown Mezzanine in the university’s Hauptli Student Activities Center. Light refreshments will be provided.
Additionally, at 7 p.m. April 8, Dr. Meredith Drees, assistant professor of religion and philosophy, will explore the life and writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the pastor and theologian who wrote “The Cost of Discipleship.” The lecture will be in room 325 of Pioneer Hall.
Drees will examine a selection of passages that display Bonhoeffer’s understanding of faith in times of conflict, his rejection of “cheap grace,” and his determination to do the will of God, even at the ultimate cost.
At 6:30 p.m. on April 9, the documentary A Film Unfinished (2010) will be shown in room 325 of Pioneer Hall.
The documentary provides insight into the Nazi propaganda machine during the Holocaust. Filmed in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1942, it illustrates Nazi techniques to stage their activities in Poland in a favorable light, while providing rarely seen footage of the horror perpetrated on the Jewish population of Warsaw during the Holocaust.