The Museum of Jewish Heritage—A Living Memorial to the Holocaust has released its March/April schedule of events, including a talk with former District Attorney Robert Morgenthau (above, photographed by Melanie Einzig), timed to the exhibition, “The Morgenthaus: A Legacy of Service.”

Wednesday, Mar. 3, 7 p.m.
Saints & Tzadiks
With Grammy award-winning artists Susan McKeown and Lorin Sklamberg and guitarists Erik Della Penna and Eamon O’Leary.
Irish chanteuse Susan McKeown  joins Klezmatics vocalist and accordionist Lorin Sklamberg to weave musical tales from the Yiddish and Gaelic traditions.
Culled from rare archival material and old recordings, McKeown and Sklamberg have selected songs of various themes from the Jewish and Irish traditions including love, death, betrothal, betrayal, and the demon drink. The bulk of the Jewish material is drawn from the Ruth Rubin Archive at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, where Sklamberg serves as Sound Archivist. The Irish songs come from both the popular and ancient Gaelic traditions.
Susan McKeown is widely acknowledged to be one of the most powerful and innovative voices in Irish music. Since her debut Bones (1995) she has produced 10 albums of original and world music and built an impressive career through her many releases, extensive touring, and performances on programs such as A Prairie Home Companion, All Things Considered, World Café, and Mountain Stage and for PBS, Absolutely Irish, Sessions at West 54th and American Masters. Susan has performed with Peter Seeger, Natalie Merchant, Billy Bragg, and many others.
The Klezmatics are globally renowned world music superstars—and the only klezmer band to win a Grammy award. They have performed with folk singers Pete Seeger, Arlo Guthrie, and Odetta, classical virtuoso Itzhak Perlman, singer-songwriters Ben Folds and Natalie Merchant, Beat poet legend Allen Ginsberg, and many others. Lorin Sklamberg can be heard on more than 50 CDs, and regularly collaborates with his Klezmatics bandmates for various projects. He composes and performs for film, dance, stage, and circus, produces recordings, and teaches and lectures.
Guitarist Erik Della Penna spent the latter 1990s as a session musician for the likes of Joan Osborne, Natalie Merchant, and Yazbek. In 1999, he and Dean Sharenow formed Kill Henry Sugar, the well received New York band.
Originally from Dublin, guitarist Eamon O’Leary has toured extensively with various groups throughout Ireland and Europe. He has recorded in the US, Ireland, and Europe and has played with the Eileen Ivers Band, Paddy Keenan, James Keane, and Emer Mayock, among others.
In association with The Irish Arts Center. The Irish Arts Center. $20, $15 students/seniors, $10 members.

Sunday, Mar. 7, 2 p.m.
Killing Kasztner: The Jew Who Dealt With Nazis
(U.S.A., 2009, 114 minutes)
Post-screening Q&A moderated by Dr. David G. Marwell with filmmaker Gaylen Ross, Professor Dina Porat, Tel Aviv University, and Professor Ronald Zweig, NYU.
This probing documentary, which Jeffrey Lyons calls a “stunning, shocking bit of suppressed history,” examines the life of Rezso Kasztner, who negotiated with Adolf Eichmann to rescue 1,700 Jews on a Swiss-bound train.  Kasztner was condemned as a traitor in Israel and assassinated by Jewish extremists in 1957. Through accounts of the trial, family testimony, and revelations from his killers, the film encourages viewers to investigate this forgotten man’s legacy, almost 66 years after the German occupation of Hungary on March 19, 1944.
Gaylen Ross has produced, directed, and written documentaries that premiered on PBS as part of the prestigious POV series, A&E Television, and The Learning Channel, and for England’s Channel 4. Her documentary film on New York’s world of diamond dealers, Dealers Among Dealers received a Gold Plaque from the Chicago Film Festival. She was producer/writer of the Emmy-award-winning Blood Money: Switzerland’s Nazi Gold, a feature-length documentary on the Swiss Banks and the Holocaust. Her other documentaries include Listen to Her Heart: The Life and Music of Laurie Beechman; Selling the Dream: Stock Hype and Fraud; To Russia for Love, about the Russian mail-order bride business; Not Just Las Vegas, about gambling in the United States; and Out of Solidarity, the story of three families of the outlawed Solidarity union.
Ronald Zweig is a Professor and Director of the Taub Center for Israel Studies at New York University. His publications include Britain and Palestine During the Second World War, German Reparations and the Jewish World: A History of the Claims Conference; and The Gold Train: the Looting of Hungarian Jewry. Dr. Zweig’s areas of research and interest include history of British mandate, the State of Israel, and modern Jewish history.
Professor Dina Porat is head of the Chaim Rosenberg School for Jewish Studies at Tel Aviv University and of the Stephen Roth Institute and holds the Alfred P. Slaner Chair for the Study of Contemporary Anti-Semitism and Racism. She is also a member of the Yad Vashem Scientific Advisory Board and of its board of the International Center for Holocaust Studies. Her extensive published work includes the first research on the Yishuv and the Shoah, a biography of Abba Kovner, and the TAU annual Anti-Semitism Worldwide. She is currently the academic advisor for the Task Force for International Cooperation on Holocaust Education Remembrance and Research.
David G. Marwell, Ph.D. served as the Chief of Investigative Research at the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Special Investigations, where he conducted historical research in support of prosecution of Nazi war criminals living in the United States. He also played a major role in the Justice Department’s investigations of Klaus Barbie and Josef Mengele. He is the director of the Museum of Jewish Heritage— A Living Memorial to the Holocaust.
$10, $7 students/seniors, $5 members.

Sunday, Mar. 14, 1 p.m.
The Macaroons: Let’s Go Coconuts
Celebrate Passover with JDub’s first rock group for kids with whimsical songs about flying matzoh brei and what to do if you drop a matzoh ball. The Macaroons’ big harmonies and irresistible melodies are inspired by everything from the Kinks to Queen to the Shins. A spin-off of the critically acclaimed band, The LeeVees, the Macaroons play catchy pop-rock with tunes like “Hurry Up And Light The Candle” and “Rock & Roll Yarmulke.” Let’s Go Coconuts is their debut album. $10, $7 children 12 and under.
Museum members: $7, $5 children 12 and under.

Wednesday, Mar. 17; Thursday, Mar. 18; and Sunday, Mar. 21
Documentary Filmmaker Pierre Sauvage: Retrospective and Premiere
Join us for a rare retrospective of works by multi-award-winning documentary filmmaker Pierre Sauvage. A child survivor, Sauvage has devoted himself to exploring stories about rescue during the Holocaust and the American reaction to the massacre of the Jews in Europe. Each day of the series is $10, $7 students/seniors, $5 members.

Wednesday, Mar. 17, 6:30 p.m.
Yiddish: The Mother Tongue
(USA, 1979-2009, revised 30th-anniversary edition, 56 minutes)
Post-screening discussion with Pierre Sauvage; Aaron Lansky, director, National Yiddish Book Center; Isaiah Sheffer, artistic director, Symphony Space; and Professor Joshua Fishman, Yeshiva University.
This Emmy-award-winning film is a loving portrait of a unique and tenacious language and culture, told through interviews, music, humor, poetry, and film clips. Examining the importance of Yiddish to American Jews today, this first documentary ever made about the centuries-old language of the Jews evokes its riches through interviews with comedian David Steinberg, actor Herschel Bernardi, writer Leo Rosten, and many others.
Aaron Lansky is the founder and president of the National Yiddish Book Center. He has received numerous awards and recognitions, including a National Jewish Book Award, honorary doctorates from Amherst College and the State University of New York, and a 1989 Genius Grant from the MacArthur Foundation.
Isaiah Sheffer is co-founder and artistic director of Symphony Space and director and host of Selected Shorts live and on radio. His radio, television, theater, and film credits include work as a commentator on the arts for WNYC’s weekly radio column Around New York; producer/writer for The Road to the White House, and writer/director, The Last Chapter.
Dr. Joshua Fishman is a distinguished University Research Professor Emeritus of Social Sciences at Yeshiva University. He is an international leader in the fields of sociolinquistics and bilingual education. Dr. Fishman’s books include The Handbook of Language and Ethnicity and Can Threatened Language Be Saved.
Co-sponsored by the National Yiddish Book Center.

Thursday, Mar. 18, 6:30 p.m.
Weapons of the Spirit
(USA/France, 1989–2010, 90 minutes)
Post-screening discussion with Pierre Sauvage and other Le Chambon residents. In this acclaimed film, Sauvage tells the story of the mountain community in Le Chambon, France that defied the Nazis and saved 5,000 Jews, including the filmmaker’s parents. Sauvage himself was born in this unique Christian oasis. It was only at the age of 18 that he learned that he and his family were Jewish and survivors of the Holocaust. Weapons of the Spirit won numerous awards, including the prestigious DuPont-Columbia Award in Broadcast Journalism (sharing the documentary award with Ken Burns’ The Civil War series). The film received two national prime-time broadcasts on PBS.

Sunday, Mar. 21, 2 p.m.
And Crown Thy Good: Varian Fry in Marseille
Excerpts from feature work-in-progress (USA)
Sauvage presents a preview of his upcoming feature documentary about the most successful private American rescue effort during the Nazi era, the mission led in France by a New York intellectual named Varian Fry. The Fry committee helped some 2,000 people escape from France, including many intellectual and artistic luminaries. Marc Chagall, Max Ernst, and Hannah Arendt were among those saved by Fry. While celebrating Fry and other remarkable Americans who joined him in his efforts, the documentary will also place the story in the context of those challenging times and address American policies toward unwanted refugees.

3 p.m.
Not Idly By: Peter Bergson, America and the Holocaust
(USA, 2009, 40 minutes)
Post-screening discussion with Pierre Sauvage interviewed by author and Vanity Fair writer-at-large Marie Brenner. This film presents the challenging testimony of a militant Palestinian Jew who spent the war years in the U.S. leading a group that struggled to make saving the Jews of Europe an American objective. The film is a posthumous portrait of the controversial Bergson who castigated American Jewish leaders for failing to rise to the occasion and pressured the U.S. government to save Jews. While it chronicles his rare triumphs, the film also looks at his inability to rally the Jewish establishment, the hostility of the U.S. State Department, and FDR’s reluctance to get involved in rescue measures.
Marie Brenner’s exposé of the tobacco industry, “The Man Who Knew Too Much,” was the basis for the 1999 movie The Insider, which was nominated for seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture. She is also the author of Apples and Oranges: My Brother and Me, Lost and Found (2009) Great Dames: What I Learned from Older Women (2000), and the bestselling House of Dreams: The Bingham Family of Louisville (1988).

Wednesday, Mar. 24, 7 p.m.
Save the Deli author David Sax interviewed by cookbook author and food maven Arthur Schwartz
Sax’s quest to save the endangered deli is a call to action filled with vivid descriptions of cured meats piled high on rye, soups glowing with melted chicken fat, and buttery rugelach. Over the course of the past few years Sax toured the world, interviewing deli owners and famous deli lovers (like Ed Koch, Ruth Reichel, and Mel Brooks), cutting sandwiches at Katz’s, and voyaging to New York, L.A., Montreal, Paris, London, and Poland in search of the heart of deli country. Don’t come to this program hungry.
David Sax is a journalist who has contributed to New York Magazine, VanityFair.com, GQ, Portfolio, Rolling Stone, and other publications. Save the Deli, which the Los Angeles Times calls “deeply satisfying,” is his first book. Arthur Schwartz is acknowledged as one of the country’s foremost experts on food, cooking, culinary history, restaurants, and restaurant history. He was the restaurant critic and executive food editor of the New York Daily News for 18 years and has published several cookbooks including Arthur Schwartz’s Jewish Home Cooking: Yiddish Recipes Revisited and The Southern Italian Table: Authentic Tastes from Traditional Kitchens.
$10, $7 students/seniors, $5 for members.

Wednesday, Apr. 7, 7 p.m.
An Evening with Acclaimed Israeli Author Sayvon Liebrecht
Liebrecht, who was born in Munich to Holocaust survivors, will discuss growing up in a home of survivors, the psychological and social phenomena of the “second generation,” and how these subjects manifest themselves in her stories and plays. Sayvon Liebrecht is the author of six collections of short stories and novellas, two novels, and three plays. Her novels are The Women My Father Knew and A Man, A Woman and a Man.
Co-sponsored by the Consulate General of Israel. $5, free for members.

Sunday, Apr. 11
Day-long Observance of Yom HaShoah—Holocaust Remembrance Day
Come to the Museum to remember those who were lost and learn from those who survived. Museum admission is free for everyone with suggested donation.

Sunday, Apr. 11, 3 p.m.
Annual Gathering of Remembrance
At Congregation Emanu-El, Fifth Ave. and 65 St. Join community leaders for New York City’s oldest and largest commemoration to honor the six million Jews who perished in the Holocaust. Co-sponsored by the Museum, the Warsaw Ghetto Resistance Organization, and the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and their Descendants, in association with Anti-Defamation League, Auschwitz Jewish Center, Consulate General of Israel, Council of Young Jewish Presidents, Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, Jewish Labor Committee, New York Board of Rabbis, and UJA-Federation of New York. For more information or to reserve tickets please call 646-437-4227 between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. Monday–Friday or e-mail agr@mjhnyc.org. Tickets must be reserved by April 2.

Wednesday, Apr. 14, 7 p.m.
We Are Going to Pick Potatoes: Norway and the Holocaust, the Untold Story (Rowman & Littlefield, 2010)
With author Irene Levin Berman interviewed by Museum curator Bonnie Gurewitsch and Bjarte Bruland, Chief Curator, The Oslo Jewish Museum interviewed by Danish journalist Samuel Rachlin.
In 1942, four-year-old Irene Levin was one of 1,200 Norwegian Jews who escaped to Sweden. Some 771 Norwegian Jews were sent to Auschwitz, only 28 survived. We Are Going to Pick Potatoes describes the early settlement of Jews in Norway at the end of the nineteenth century, after the law in the Norwegian Constitution denying Jewish immigration was repealed. The book focuses on the invasion by Germany in 1940, the political climate in Norway at the beginning of the war, the deportation of the Jews to Auschwitz in 1942, and for some, the escape to Sweden. The book also describes the return from Sweden to Norway after the liberation and the resettlement and rebuilding of the Jewish community during the post-war years.
Berman, who will discuss her family’s rescue, is joined by Bjarte Bruland, a Norwegian historian who was instrumental in the post-war restitution of Jewish assets.  Post-war Norway and its current tensions with Israel will also be discussed.
Irene Levin Berman is working on a children’s book based on her experiences. She is also a renowned translator of playwright Henrik Ibsen and an important supporter of both the Oslo Centre for Holocaust and Genocide Studies and the Jewish Museum in Oslo.
Bjarte Bruland is the author of The Deportation of the Norwegian Jews and the Role of the Norwegian Authorities. During 1996-97 he was a member of the government committee investigating the fate of Jewish property during and after the war.
Bonnie Gurewitsch is an archivist and curator at the Museum of Jewish Heritage. She has been a Holocaust educator and oral historian for more than 30 years. She is the author of several books on the Holocaust and has curated many of the Museum’s temporary exhibitions, including the current installation Beyond Swastika and Jim Crow: Jewish Refugee Scholars at Black Colleges and the award-winning Daring to Resist: Jewish Defiance in the Holocaust. Samuel Rachlin is a Danish journalist and author who is on the board of directors of Thanks to Scandinavia, a non-profit organization devoted to telling the stories of Scandinavians who saved Jews during the Holocaust. Co-sponsored by Thanks to Scandinavia. $5, free for Museum and Thanks to Scandinavia members. Reception to follow.

Sunday, Apr. 18, 2:30 p.m.
Way to Heaven (Himmelweg), the internationally acclaimed play by Juan Mayorga
A New York Times Critics’ Pick, which the Times calls “…a powerful illustration of how theatrical artifice can be pressed into the service of atrocity,” Way to Heaven has been performed to great acclaim around the world. The play is inspired by the true story of the elaborate deception that took place at the Theresienstadt concentration camp.
The play begins years after the fact with an account by the Red Cross employee who was there, then leaps backward in time to show the creation and rehearsal of another very unusual play, one in which the Jewish prisoners are assigned roles and given lines to say to inspectors passing by. Written by a witty, cultured, humanistic Nazi Commandant and the Jewish prisoner selected to play the Mayor, this “play” will ultimately serve its purpose and the inspector will return with a positive review. Perception, the power of images, rhetoric, and theater itself are among Mayorga’s themes, and also, perhaps most significantly, the play asks, how much courage is required to take responsibility for what one sees.
The company will take part in a post-performance conversation. Visit the show’s official website at waytoheaventheplay.com for more information.
Juan Mayorga was born in 1965 in Madrid, and is one of Spain’s most prominent contemporary playwrights. In 2007 he was the recipient of Spain’s National Theater Award. In March 2009, he received the Max Award for Best Playwright. His other plays include Love Letters To Stalin, Nocturnal, and The Scorched Garden. His work has been presented in 18 countries, and translated into 16 different languages.
$15, $12 students/seniors, $10 members.

Wednesday, Apr. 21, 7 p.m.
Robert Morgenthau in conversation with Marie Brenner
The legendary Robert M. Morgenthau reveals personal stories about his illustrious career and remarkable family in this intimate conversation with author and journalist Marie Brenner.
After serving in the Navy during World War II, Museum Chairman Robert M. Morgenthau engaged in a private legal practice and was appointed U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. From 1974 to 2009, he served as District Attorney for New York County. Under his leadership the Manhattan DA’s office has been called “the country’s premier prosecutorial office.” In this post he fought corruption, fraud, organized crime, and white-collar crime. He addressed crime at multiple levels—by prosecuting criminals, restructuring the system of prosecution, and creating programs for the victims and communities affected by crime. He has long been affiliated with numerous charities. His civic causes include the Police Athletic League, which he has served as President and Chairman, and the Museum of Jewish Heritage, of which he is Chairman. He has also been active in many other organizations that serve Jewish and non-Jewish communities including the Puerto Rican Legal Defense Fund, B’nai Brith, and the Anti-Defamation League.
Marie Brenner’s exposé of the tobacco industry, “The Man Who Knew Too Much,” was the basis for the 1999 movie The Insider, which was nominated for seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture. She is also the author of Apples and Oranges: My Brother and Me, Lost and Found; Great Dames: What I Learned from Older Women, and the bestselling House of Dreams: The Bingham Family of Louisville (1988). Join us for a tour of The Morgenthaus: A Legacy of Service at 1 p.m. Space is limited. Pre-registration for tour is required. Call 646-437-4202.
$10, $7 students/seniors, $5 for members.

Sunday, Apr. 25
Earth Day Family Programs: Celebrate the 40th Anniversary of Earth Day
10 a.m.–3 p.m.: Families, come and enjoy hands-on craft activities that explore the themes of Earth Day. Free with purchase of Museum admission or concert ticket.
1 p.m.: ShirLaLa in Earth Worm Disco. Join kiddie rocker ShirLaLa (a.k.a. Shira Kline) to celebrate Earth Day and the wonders of growing up green. She and her band create a musical playground for all of the little rock n’ rollers and their grown up friends who love to sing and dance, and love our planet, too! Shira Kline is a Jewish musician, educator, and performer living in New York City. Starting at age 14, Kline began teaching Jewish music in Monroe, Louisiana. She continued her teaching while attending Sarah Lawrence College in New York. Over the years, Kline has developed an approach to Jewish learning that uses music, dance, prayer, tradition, and Torah. She is also a founding company member of Storahtelling: Ritual Theatre Revived. In addition to performing, Shira is a worship leader and presents engaging programs for children and adults including Tot Shabbat, adult Jewish music meditation, and professional development for early childhood and music teachers.  In 2008, she served as adjunct faculty for Hava Nashira and has led ongoing programs for families at Temple Emanu-El in New York City for the past ten years. ShirLaLa also features the talents of drummer Lee “Free” Frisari and guitarist Avi Fox-Rosen. Together they travel throughout the country to touch the lives of children and their families at synagogues, museums, schools, festivals and community centers. $10, $7 children 12 and under. Museum members: $7, $5 children 12 and under.

photo by Seth Kushner

Wednesday, Apr. 28, 7 p.m.
Backing into Forward (Doubleday, March 2010)
Award-winning New Yorker cartoonist, playwright, and author Jules Feiffer delivers a witty, illustrated rendition of his life, from his childhood as a wimpy kid in the Bronx to his legendary career in the arts. Cartoonist, playwright, screenwriter, and children’s book author and illustrator Jules Feiffer was the first cartoonist commissioned by The New York Times to create comic strips for their Op-Ed page. He has since shifted his focus toward writing and illustrating books for children and young adults including The Man in the Ceiling, A Room with a Zoo, and Bark, George! Feiffer won a Pulitzer Prize and a George Polk Award for his cartoons; an Obie for his plays; an Academy Award for the animation of his cartoon satire, Munro; and Lifetime Achievement Awards from the Writers Guild of America and the National Cartoonist Society. He has taught at the Yale School of Drama, Northwestern University, Dartmouth, and at Stony Brook Southampton College. He has been honored with major retrospectives at the New-York Historical Society, the Library of Congress, and The School of Visual Arts. $10, $7 students/seniors, $5 members.