Lecture: Creighton Graduate John Pehle's Work to Save Jews During the Holocaust

Dr. Rebecca Erbelding, a historian working at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, in Washington, D. C., and the author of Rescue Board: The Untold Story of America’s Efforts to Save the Jews of Europe (2019), will deliver the lecture “Creighton Graduate John Pehle and His Work to Save Jews During the Holocaust.” Creighton University awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters posthumously to John Pehle, who was a graduate of Omaha Central High School and Creighton University. Dr. Erbelding will sign books in the atrium after the lecture. 

Dr. Erbelding's Rescue Board: The Untold Story of America’s Efforts to Save the Jews of Europe, published by Doubleday in 2018, won the National Jewish Book Award for Writing Based on Archival Material. She served as a historical advisor and an on-camera expert in Florentine Films’ The U.S. and the Holocaust, directed by Ken Burns, Lynn Novick, and Sarah Botstein, which debuted on PBS in September 2022. She is an educator, curator, and archivist at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and frequently presents on the War Refugee Board; US immigration policy during the 1930s; and the “Hoecker album,” a photograph album owned by Karl Hoecker, the final adjutant to the commandant of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Her work on the Hoecker album has been adapted into a theatrical production, Here There are Blueberries, written by Moisés Kaufman and Amanda Gronich, and developed by the Tectonic Theater Project. She holds a PhD in American History from George Mason University. 

Presented by:

• The John C. Kenefick Chair in the Humanities
• The Klutznick Chair in Jewish Civilization
• The Rabbi Myer and Dorothy Kripke Center for the Study of Religion and Society 
• The Kingfisher Institute for the Liberal Arts and Professions 
• The Rev. Michael G. Morrison, S. J., Professor of History