April is Holocaust Remembrance Month, and this year marks the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II and the liberation of concentration camps.
“From Swastika to Jim Crow: Jewish Scholars in Black Colleges” is a 2000 documentary that explores the similarities between Nazism in Germany (the Swastika) and racism in the American south (Jim Crow). In 1939, the Nazi government expelled Jewish scholars from German universities. Many of them found teaching positions in Southern Historically Black Colleges and Universities, where they sympathized with the plight of their African-American colleagues and students.
John Whittington Franklin, whose father John Hope Franklin is featured in the film, will discuss the partnership between the black and Jewish communities during the civil rights struggle and the failure of immigration to save lives from genocide. The discussion will continue with a representative from ACLU leading a dialogue about immigration issues today.