Rivier University and Temple Beth Abraham sponsor Yom HaShoah observance

Featured speaker: Thomas Doherty, author of
Hollywood and Hitler: 1933-1939 

The Greater Nashua
Holocaust Remembrance Committee presents a Holocaust Remembrance Day interfaith
observance, sponsored by Rivier University in conjunction with Temple Beth
Abraham, at 7 p.m. in the Dion Center Reception Room on Clement Street in
Nashua, N.H. on Monday, April 28. 

Brandeis professor, author and historian Thomas Doherty
will discuss how Jewish and non-Jewish movie moguls responded to the rising
threat of Nazism during the 1930s. 

Between 1933 and 1939, representations of the Nazis and
the full meaning of Nazism came slowly to Hollywood, growing more ominous and
distinct only as the decade wore on. Recapturing what ordinary Americans saw on
the screen during the emerging Nazi threat, Thomas Doherty reclaims forgotten
films, such as Hitler’s Reign of Terror (1934), a pioneering anti-Nazi
docudrama by Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jr.; I Was a Captive of Nazi Germany
(1936), a sensational true tale of “a Hollywood girl in Naziland!”; and Professor

Mamlock (1938), an anti-Nazi film made by German refugees living in the

Soviet Union.   

Doherty also recounts how the disproportionately Jewish
backgrounds of the executives of the studios and the workers on the payroll
shaded reactions to what was never simply a business decision. As Europe
hurtled toward war, a proxy battle waged in Hollywood over how to conduct
business with the Nazis, how to cover Hitler and his victims in the newsreels,
and whether to address or ignore Nazism in Hollywood feature films. Should
Hollywood lie low, or stand tall and sound the alarm?   

A question-and-answer session and a candle-lighting
ceremony memorializing the victims of the Holocaust will follow the
presentation. A photography display, "A History of the Holocaust,"
distributed by the Anti-defamation League of B’nai B’rith, will be on display
in the Dion Center Reception Room from 6 p.m. through 9 p.m. 

Copies of Doherty’s book will be available to purchase at
the event.