Seminar in Miami

When the University of Miami first offered Literature of the Holocaust as an undergraduate English course in the Fall of 1973, Professor Helen Fagin had to define the Holocaust for some students.

She doesn’t have to do that anymore. Nevertheless, she said, “the entire community has been lethargic about the Holocaust.” To overcome the apathy and lack of knowledge, Fagin organized an intensive three-day “Conference on the Moral Significance of the Holocaust” last fall for 675 local professionals, lay persons, academics, clergy and students.

A native of Radomsko, a town 200 miles south of Warsaw, Fagin escaped the lines for Treblinka, where her parents perished. Still in her teens, she was incarcerated in the Warsaw Ghetto and later, in a labor camp. Again she escaped and lived underground. After the war, she emigrated to New York with her two sisters.