Conference on Ukraine City That Endured Both Nazi and Soviet Invasions to be Held at University of Richmond
March 25, 2003
A daylong conference on L'viv, a city in Western Ukraine that experienced both the Nazi and Soviet invasions and the horrors of the Holocaust, will be held April 5 at the University of Richmond.
L'viv is the city's present-day Ukranian name, but its other names include the Polish Lwow, Russian L'vov and the Yiddish and German Lemberg. The conference is called "Lemberg, L'vov, L'viv: Conflict, Change and Survival: The Tale of a City, 1939-45."
The event, which is free and open to the public, will be held in the North Court Reception Room. The Richmond Quest and the departments of classical studies and international education are sponsoring the conference.
Students taking a special course on L'viv with Walter Stevenson, associate professor of classical studies, will speak at the morning session beginning at 10 a.m. The class also plans to visit L'viv as part of the course and publish a narrative of the period. Stevenson had a Fulbright to go to L'viv in 1997-98.
The second session beginning at 11 a.m. will focus on eyewitness accounts. Mark Strauss will speak on "I Was There: Reminiscences of a Jewish Boy, 1939-45." Strauss lived in Lwow and in the Ghetto under German occupation when he was 9-15 years old. Documentary filmmaker Ruth Shapiro, who accompanied Strauss on a trip to L'viv in 2002, will show a short video "Scenes from Childhood." Strauss inspired the study the class has undertaken, and he will serve as their guide when they travel to L'viv during May term for a two-week study of sites, artifacts and documents pertaining to the Holocaust and its aftermath in Lwow.
A third session beginning at 2 p.m. will feature Juli Sternberg, speaking on "Archival Evidence and the Fate of Lwow's Jews." Sternberg and his family escaped Lwow before the war, although they returned afterwards. He has spent the last 30 years seeking out documentary evidence of the Holocaust from the archives of L'viv. He was a consultant for Steven Spielberg's "Schindler's List."
Christine Kulke will speak on "The Village Enters the City: Jewish, Polish and Ukrainian Lwow/L'viv Under Soviet and Nazi Occupation, 1939-47." She is a doctoral student at the University of California at Berkeley. Her dissertation is on ethnic relations in the city during the 1930s to the 1950s.
For further information, call Nick Gozik at (804) 287-6557.