Denver: Border changes & migration routes, February 27

Do you know how border changes impacted your ancestors? How did they find their way to the boats that would carry them to new worlds?

"Chasing Border Changes and The Choice of Migration Routes for 20th Century Eastern European Jews" with Dr. David Shneer PhD, will begin at 10am on Sunday, February 27, at the Jewish Community Center, Denver. There is no fee.

When American Ashkenazi Jews think of their migration stories, they almost always involve a small town in contemporary Poland or Ukraine, a boat across an ocean, and a story of triumph in the new world. What about those Jews who took trains to other places in Eastern Europe like Moscow, Kharkov, Lodz, or Budapest? In this lecture, we will learn more about Jewish migration patterns, changing European country borders and ask how the mass emigration of many of our relatives fits into a larger story about Jewish migration throughout Eastern Europe.

David Shneer is associate professor of history and director of Jewish Studies at University of Colorado at Boulder.

His newest book project - "Through Soviet Jewish Eyes: Photography, War, & the Holocaust" - looks at the lives and works of two dozen World War II military photographers to examine what kinds of photographs they took when they encountered evidence of Nazi genocide on the Eastern Front.

Shneer has lived and worked as a scholar and writer in Russia, Germany, and Israel and has written for the New York Times, Huffington Post, Rocky Mountain News and the Denver Post as well as magazines dedicated to Jewish life and culture, including The Forward, Pakntreger, Jewcy, and Nextbook.

He has served as the Resnick Fellow at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum and the Stern Senior Scholar at the South African Holocaust Foundation.

For more information, view the JGSCo website.