An Untold Story of the Holocaust - Rescuing Jews From Rhodes
The CSULB Jewish Studies Program is delighted to bring Dr. Isaac Amon to Long Beach on Wednesday, November 20th, to discuss “An Untold Story of the Holocaust: Selahattin Ülkümen’s Rescue of Jews from Rhodes. The talk will be 7 pm at the Alpert JCC (3801 E. Willow St., Long Beach, 90815).
2025 will mark 80 years since the end of the Holocaust, or Nazi Germany’s systematic and state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million Jews. By May 1945, when the Allies defeated Nazi Germany, 2/3 of European Jewry and 1/3 of worldwide Jewry had been annihilated. Traditional Holocaust awareness has long focused on Ashkenazi Jewry, or Jews in Central and Eastern Europe. By numbers, they bore the brunt of the genocide. Yet, Sephardic Jewry was also profoundly devastated, especially Salonika, Greece, and the Island of Rhodes. In a time of surging antisemitism around the world unprecedented since the Shoah, join us to learn of a largely unknown chapter in the annals of the Holocaust, WWII, and 20th century history.
In his talk, Dr. Amon will highlight the efforts by Selahattin Ülkümen, the Turkish Consul-General on Rhodes, to rescue Jews from the Nazis, as well as examine other rescue efforts at the time.
Dr. Isaac Amon is Director of Academic Research at Jewish Heritage Alliance, an educational platform dedicated to promoting the legacy of Sepharad, or Iberian Jewry. He earned a J.D., LL.M. in dispute resolution and J.S.D. (Ph.D. in Law) from Washington University School of Law in St. Louis. He was a Legal Fellow at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague, a Legislative Director at the Missouri Department of Corrections, and an ISIS war crimes investigator. This summer, Dr. Amon was a scholar in-residence at Oxford University through the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP). A sought-after global speaker on legal history, international criminal justice, and Jewish memory – including antisemitism, crypto-Judaism, the Inquisition, and the Holocaust – he is the proud grandson of 20th century Ashkenazi, Sephardi, and Mizrahi immigrants to the United States. To learn more, please visit www.isaacamon.com.
As always, CSULB Jewish Studies talks are free and open to the public. For security reasons, the JCC is asking people to RSVP. You can still attend without RSVPing, but it will take a little longer to check in. Please rsvp here: https://jewishlongbeach.regfox.com/free-lectures .
