The Ackerman Center Podcast

Please join Dr. Nils Roemer and Dr. Sarah Valente for a live conversation about the newly-released documentary Anne Frank Parallel Stories. Oscar-winning actress Helen Mirren retraces the life of Anne Frank through the pages of her diary and introduces us to the stories of five other Holocaust survivors. We invite you to watch this documentary, which is available on Netflix, prior to our conversat...

In the "New Connections" series, Dr. Sarah Valente and Dr. Nils Roemer meet with directors of Holocaust and Human Rights centers, organizations, and museums around the world. Our featured guest today is Adam Strom, the Director of Re-Imagining Migration in Boston, and the former Director of Scholarship and Innovation at Facing History and Ourselves. Resources developed under his direction have bee...

On this Fourth of July weekend, listen to Dr. Nils Roemer and Dr. Sarah Valente discuss the contributions of Jewish-Americans Emma Lazarus and Irving Berlin to American culture. #GodBlessAmerica #GiveMeYourTiredYourPoor

Join Dr. Sarah Valente and Dr. Nils Roemer to learn about Operation Barbarossa, the creation of the word "genocide" by Raphael Lemkin, and be inspired by new music by Max Richter that appeals to our common humanity.

In this new episode, Dr. Valente and Dr. Roemer discuss an exciting upcoming lecture on Operation Barbarossa, the Teacher Institute workshop, which will be hosted virtually by the Ackerman Center this week, and the beautiful concert "We Are Here" (you get to enjoy a few musical fragments from the concert). The professors also reflect on this past week's monumental landmark decisions by the U.S. Su...

In this episode Dr. Valente and Dr. Roemer discuss Deeyah Khan's 2017 Emmy-winning documentary White Right: Meeting the Enemy, and the historical parallels in the rise of anti-Semitism in moments of crisis in Germany in the 1930s and during the current COVID-19 pandemic.

“The most important thing that I learned in my life is that bigotry and hatred are not the most urgent problem. The most urgent, the most disgraceful, the most shameful and the most tragic problem is silence." Rabbi Joachim Prinz Prinz was a rabbi of the Jewish community in Berlin under the Hitler regime and victim of the Holocaust who spoke minutes before Martin Luther King, Jr. took the stage to...

In this new series, "New Connections," Dr. Sarah Valente and Dr. Nils Roemer meet with directors of Holocaust and Human Rights centers and museums around the world. Our first special guest is Morgan Blum Schneider, the director of the Jewish Family and Children's Services Holocaust Center in San Francisco. Listen to find out about meaningful new ways of connecting and supporting Holocaust educatio...

In this episode, Dr. Roemer and Dr. Valente discuss the ending of the PBS series World on Fire. They consider the lacking historical considerations by the show when it came to showcasing the abrupt disruption to Jewish life during the occupation of Poland and France by the advancing Nazis.

In this episode, Dr. Nils Roemer and Dr. Sarah Valente discuss the various storylines that develop while the war itself seems to be put on hold, as the Nazis march through and occupy Paris.

In this episode, we celebrate the successful conclusion of teaching the Spring 2020 semester, where we all came together to make it to the finish line. And, we also discuss the significance of the Battle of Dunkirk and its memory as it appears in the fifth episode of World on Fire.

Join Dr. Roemer and Dr. Valente's conversation reflecting on the end of the spring semester, and the rapid changes in the storyline of the PBS series World on Fire.

Listen to Dr. Nils Roemer and Dr. Sarah Valente discuss exciting Ackerman Center events and the moral dilemmas that start to emerge on the third episode of PBS's World on Fire.

Listen to Dr. Nils Roemer and Dr. Sarah Valente discuss on-going Ackerman Center events and the historical background to the second episode of World on Fire.

Listen to Dr. Nils Roemer and Dr. Sarah Valente discuss UTD's transition to online teaching and the acclaimed new PBS series World on Fire.