The Holocaust Seventy Years On: What happens if we don’t write the history?

On Thursday, September 11, Dr. Charles W. Sydnor, Jr., will instruct an unusual class at the Virginia Historical Society. Dr. Sydnor is president and executive director of the Virginia Holocaust Museum.

He is a published author of books and articles devoted to the history of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. For twenty-five years, from 1981 to 2006, Dr. Sydnor served as an expert witness for the Office of Special Investigations in the Criminal Division of the United States Department of Justice. He testified in federal trials to revoke the citizenship of and deport former SS concentration camp guards and other Nazi war criminals who had gained entry to the United States fraudulently and illegally after the Second World War.

The class will look at the seventy years since the end of World War II and will pose this question: If we do not write the history of the Holocaust, will the revisionists and deniers write it?

This is a two-part class. Class one will take place on Thursday, September 11, and class two on Thursday, September 18.  Classes begin at 5:30 p.m. and end at 7:00 p.m. Tickets for this class are $50 for VHS members and $65 for non-members.