The Ray Wolpow Institute

Upcoming event one week from today :October 27, 2026 at 9:15 am PST join us for a co-sponsored event with the Kupferberg Holocaust Center, " Flight and Metamorphosis: Translations of Nelly Sachs by Joshua Weiner.
Register to attend online: https://ow.ly/IzAk50ZKZWC
Join us for a special reading with renowned poet Joshua Weiner who will discuss his translations of Nobel Laureate Nelly Sachs, the German-Swedish poet, playwright, and Holocaust survivor. Weiner reveals the depth, pathos, and spiritual longing in Sach's work, Flight and Metamorphosis, and why it remains equally vital and imperative for our time.

Later this week on Thursday, October 22, 2026 at 7:15 am PST attend a co-sponsored event with the Kupferberg Holocaust Center for an event, "Surviving the Kindertransport: A Conversation with Manfred Korman"
Register to attend online : https://ow.ly/Eonj50ZKZmg
Join us for a special conversation with Manfred Korman, a Holocaust survivor, who describes his family’s deportation from Germany, the last-minute rescue of he and his brother Gerd on the Kindertransport, and the fate of their parents who had completely different experiences during the war.

This Wednesday, October 21 from 12 - 1:20 PM PST join us for a co-sponsored event with Fairhaven College, Western Washington University in the Fairhaven Auditorium 300 A&B or online for a World Issues Forum with David J. Silverman, PhD. The Chosen and the Damned: Native Americans and the Making of Race in the United States is an examination of the ways Indigenous people have factored as objects and actors into the invention of racial identities in the United States and its colonial predecessors. https://ow.ly/Cmoq50ZZ42S

Join us next week on Wednesday, October 21, 2026 at 11:30 am PST for our co-sponsored event with the Kuperberg Holocaust Center, "Women’s Stories: Holocaust Histories in the Museum"
Register to attend online: https://ow.ly/cZ5850ZKZ9o

Museums act as conduits of historical information to the public. As such, these institutions are responsible for considering their role in creating and perpetuating historical narratives. Using gender as a category of historical analysis reveals how women are underrepresented within memorial spaces dedicated to the Holocaust. While individual women may be visibly depicted in photos and conveyed through survivor testimonies, exhibits at many large museums often miss the overarching narrative of women’s collective experiences. Join Dr. Katie Chaka-Parks, Director of Education at the Zekelman Holocaust Center in Farmington Hills, Michigan, for a discussion about how these representations and omissions inform our understanding of the memory and history of the Holocaust.

Join us for the next World Issues Forum on
Monday, October 5, 2026: 12:00 - 1:20 PM (PT)
Fairhaven College Auditorium and Zoom
Topic: A Nation’s Undesirables: Mixed-Race Children and Whiteness in the Post-N**i Era
Speaker: Dr. Tracey Owens Patton, Professor, University of Wyoming

Register for the event: https://ow.ly/LKCl50ZUaE0

A Nation’s Undesirables centers in*******al coupling, German women’s rights, mixed-race children, and racism while questioning how the German Nation-State removed mixed-race persons in favor of fantasies of whiteness. As a result, a new narrative of women and Black German children in the postwar era emerges.

Join us one week from today on October 5, 2026 at 11:15 am PST for our co-sponsored event with the Kupferberg Holocaust Center,
"Anti-Jewish Folklore and the Rise of Antisemitism Before, During and After the Holocaust"
Register to watch online: https://ow.ly/acju50ZKY8Z
The first written account of an anti-Jewish folktale is a tale of English or German origin, published in 1228. From the Middle Ages to the Modern Era, these folktales helped fuel the anti-Jewish prejudice prevalent within and beyond Western society. By the nineteenth century, the tales assisted in paving the way for anti-Judaism to transition into antisemitism; subsequently, the N***s were then able to capitalize on these stories as objects of antisemitic propaganda. Join Dr. Sofia Lago, Lecturer of English for Academic Purposes at Suzhou University, for a discussion about how these counternarratives served to inflame rampant antisemitism perpetuated by Hitler’s N**i party.

Join us next week (Wednesday (9/30 at noon; Fairhaven Auditorium) World Issues Forum, "Interests, Values, and the Messy Middle: Diplomacy in Practice" with Ambassador (ret.) Jeffrey Hovenier, former U.S. Ambassador to Kosovo and career U.S. Foreign Service Officer.

In this talk Ambassador Hovenier will explore the role American diplomats play in identifying national interests, weighing them against competing values, and building and implementing strategies that survive the messy realities of politics, power, and time.

Welcome back, students! A new quarter is here, and we’re so glad to have you back! Whether you’re returning to campus or starting your journey at WWU, we’re wishing you a great fall quarter filled with new connections, good conversations, and plenty of opportunities to learn and grow. Be sure to check out our newsletter! https://ow.ly/fpWT50ZQgbv

Join us tomorrow for the Fall Info Fair @ Red Square! We are at Table 7, located between Haggard Hall and Wilson Library and would love to see you all!

Join us on Wednesday, September 23, @ 2:30 pm EDT for our co-sponsored event with the Kupferberg Holocaust Center, "Eve Adams: Daring Life, Dangerous Times"
Register to watch online with this link: https://ow.ly/eimS50ZImFC

In 1912, Chawa Złoczower, a Jewish Polish immigrant made her way to the US and soon helped publicize the anarchist speeches of Emma Goldman. Later, Złoczower took the name Eve Adams, and toured America, getting paid to sell radical leftist magazines. In 1925 she published a unique, pioneering book, Le***an Love, containing stories of women she had met. Her activism drew the Ire of US FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, ultimately leading to Adams’ deportation back to Poland and tragic murder in Auschwitz. Join Jonathan Ned Katz, historian and author of the 2021 biography, The Daring Life and Dangerous Times of Eve Adams, for a conversation about Adams’ adventurous life, his work to uncover her story as a vibrant resistor, and what it means in today’s troubled social world. This event is part of the 2026-27 Harriet & Kenneth Kupferberg Holocaust Center (KHC) and National Endowment for the Humanities Colloquium (NEH), “Storytelling in/as Resistance.”