The Millersville University conference is the oldest conference on the Holocaust and genocide in the United States that is run by the same institution. The conference was established by the former Chair of the History Department Professor Jack Fischel, whose grandparents and uncle perished in Poland during the Holocaust. He led the conferences for twenty-five years. After his retirement, Professor Saulius Suziedelis led the conference, and in 2010 Dr. Victoria Khiterer took over the leadership of the conference.
Each Millersville University conference is devoted to a special theme. The theme of the 35th conference was 'The Holocaust and Genocide Trials'. It was an international conference in which 47 scholars from five countries participated: the United States, Canada, Germany, Great Britain and Israel.
The conference discussed international and national Holocaust and Genocide trials. It explored the role of trials in exposing and punishing the crimes of Holocaust and genocide perpetrators and their collaborators, and the influence of trials on the formation of Holocaust and genocide history and memory. The conference also commemorated the 85th anniversary of the Holodomor in Ukraine, the 80th anniversary of Kristallnacht, and the 75th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. The keynote speakers for the conference were Lawrence Baron, Professor Emeritus of Modern Jewish History, San Diego State University and Lawrence Douglas, James J. Grosfeld Professor of Law, Jurisprudence and Social Thought, Amherst College.
The conference was opened on Yom HaShoah (Holocaust and Heroism Remembrance Day) with commemoration of victims of the Holocaust. In his welcoming speech, Millersville University President Dr. John M. Anderson said that the conference’s goals are to disseminate knowledge about the Holocaust and genocides; raise people’s awareness about these crimes against humanity; emphasize the importance of the punishment of perpetrators of the Holocaust and genocide; and highlight the danger of racism and anti-Semitism in the Modern World.
Professor Lawrence Baron delivered the first keynote speech, the Aristides de Sousa Mendes Lecture, 'Kristallnacht on Film: From Reportage to Reenactments, 1938-1948'. He showed that in the absence of a cinematic iconography, newsreels, documentaries and feature films employed several approaches to represent Kristallnacht in the ensuing decade. The directorial choices mirrored the changing national contexts of when and where they were made. In his speech, Baron analyzed Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator (1940), Roy Boulting’s Pastor Hall (1940), the British documentary Mein Kampf: My Crimes (1940), as well as the postwar German and Austrian feature films Seven Journeys (1947) and Third Reich, The Trial (1948).
Peter Black, independent scholar, presenting his paper 'Lease on Life: How the Collapse of the Soviet Union Impacted U.S. Investigations of Former Trawniki Trained Guards'