The Holocaust is among the most systematic and blatant violations of human rights in recorded history. It was rationalized by an elaborate Nazi doctrine which denied the humanity of its victims: Jews, homosexuals, communists, Slavs. The shock provoked by the cruelty of this unashamed dehumanization accelerated international human rights legislation as no previous events had ever done. One immediate result was the Universal Declaration of Human Rights proclaimed by the United Nations in 1948, in which the connection between being human and having rights was drawn for everyone. In the decades that followed, other charters expanded these rights and the mechanisms for their enforcement.

The horror of the Holocaust and the profundity of its crimes against humanity have been kept alive in film and literature and through the new archival resource of videotaped testimony. Wednesday's program begins in the afternoon with Professor Alan Filreis, an expert on the Holocaust in literature, presenting taped statements of Holocaust survivors at Kelly Writers House. In the evening's film series, Harry Reicher of Penn's Law School will discuss the rise of human rights legislation following the Third Reich, and three Penn experts—Professors Millicent Marcus, Barbie Zelizer, and Al Filreis—will consider how the Holocaust has been portrayed in cinema and literature, introducing two film classics: Alain Resnais's Night and Fog, and Vittorio De Sica's The Garden of the Finzi-Continis.

6:30 - 11:00 p.m.
Meyerson Hall, Room B-1
210 S. 34th Street

Al Filreis, Professor of English, Director, Kelly Writers House, expert on the literature of the Holocaust, and author of Modernism from Right to Left: Wallace Stevens, the Thirties, & Literary Radicalism.
Millicent Marcus, Mariano DiVito Professor of Italian Studies, Director, Film Studies Program, authority on the Holocaust in Italian literature and film, and author of Filmmaking by the Book: Italian Cinema and Literary Adaptation.
Harry Reicher, Visiting Professor of Law, University of Pennsylvania Law School. His course, "Law and the Holocaust," is the first of its kind to be offered at any law school.
Barbie Zelizer, Raymond Williams Term Chair and Associate Professor of Communication, expert on collective memory and visual representation, and author of the award-winning book, Remembering to Forget: Holocaust Memory Through the Camera's Eye.

Night and Fog (Nuit et Brouillard)
Janus Films, Directed by Alain Resnais, Written by Jean Cayrol
Hailed as one of the most vivid depictions of the horrors of Nazi concentration camps and one of the world's greatest documentaries, Night and Fog, filmed in 1955 at the postwar site of Auschwitz, combines color footage with black and white newsreels and stills to tell the story of the Holocaust and horror of man's brutal inhumanity.

The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (Il Giardino Dei Finzi-Contini)
Italian with English subtitles, Directed by Vittorio De Sica
The acclaimed The Garden of the Finzi-Continis won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film in 1971, was nominated for Best Screenplay, and received 26 international awards. Beautifully photographed in dream-like pastels, the film tells the story of a rich, aristocratic family of Italian Jews who cloistered themselves on their large estate, ignoring the growing peril of Fascist anti-semitism.

Burning Questions
Three million Catholic Poles perished in WWII alongside three million Jewish Poles. The story of Polish Catholic suffering during the Holocaust has been largely overlooked in the United States. With the recent 60th anniversary of the beginning of WWII, Burning Questions is a relevant new addition to our Holocaust awareness. While never diminishing the Jewish experience, Burning Questions includes the often forgotten three million "others".