Holocaust Memorial Lecture: Burns, Botstein to Discuss Latest Documentary

This year’s Keene State College Holocaust Memorial Lecture will be an in-person conversation with award-winning documentary filmmakers Ken Burns and Sarah Botstein, Thursday, Sept. 22, in the Mabel Brown Room, Lloyd P. Young Student Center.

The discussion will focus on their latest documentary, a three-part film co-directed with Lynn Novick titled “The U.S. and The Holocaust,” which premieres September 18-20 at 8 p.m. on PBS and online at pbs.org.

The film explores America’s response to one of the greatest humanitarian crises in history and how it tested the ideals of democracy. The series was seven years in the making.

Sponsored by the Cohen Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies, the lecture is free and open to the public. It begins at 7PM; doors open at 6:30PM. Please register online to save your spot, at https://bit.ly/3qogFjf.

The anticipated series – archival images and interviews – is almost entirely in black and white — “The evidence,” as Burns described it in an interview with Axios published in July.

In the same interview, Burns also said: “It might be possible to look back at ‘The Civil War’ and ‘World War II’ and ‘The Roosevelts’ … and say they might be equal. But I will not work on a more important film than this … in terms of gravity of the subject.”

“The Holocaust is an event in human history that raises fundamental questions about what it means to be human and how or whether we hold ourselves accountable to our neighbors in times of crisis. … I hope that this film – and our conversation with the filmmakers – will raise critical awareness about the dangers of hatred and antisemitism both historically and today.”

– Kate DeConinck, director for the Cohen Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies

Burns, of Walpole, and Botstein are regarded as among the very best at their craft, so “We are thrilled to have them with us on campus,” said Kate DeConinck, director for the Cohen Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.

“The Holocaust,” she added, “is an event in human history that raises fundamental questions about what it means to be human and how or whether we hold ourselves accountable to our neighbors in times of crisis. In that sense, I hope that this film – and our conversation with the filmmakers – will raise critical awareness about the dangers of hatred and antisemitism both historically and today.”

Each year since 1998, the Cohen Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies has hosted the Holocaust Memorial Lecture, which invites scholars, writers, and activists to help listeners remember and think in new ways about the Holocaust and its relevance in the world today.

For decades, Burns, Botstein and Novick, along with the talented staff at Florentine Films, have been producing critically acclaimed multi-episode documentary films about American history, life and culture that air on public television — “The Roosevelts,” Country Music,” “Ernest Hemingway,” and “The Central Park Five” being a few of his more widely known works.

In addition to being distributed by PBS, Burns’ films are often produced in association with WETA-TV and/or the National Endowment for the Humanities.

To learn more about Keene State’s Cohen Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies, click on this link (https://www.keene.edu/academics/cchgs/)