Event
Milchberg Lecture: Susan Eisenhower on the enduring ethics legacy of World War II
Tuesday, April 16, 2019
4:00 p.m.
1412 Toll Physics Building
Abby Robinson, CMNS
abbyr@umd.edu
The Inaugural Irving and Renee Milchberg Endowed Lecture
Department of Physics
"Lessons from 1945: Ethics, the War in Europe, and its Enduring Legacy"
Susan Eisenhower
Founder and Chairwoman of the Eisenhower Institute
President and CEO of the Eisenhower Group
The Eisenhower Institute works to advance civic discourse on significant issues of public policy, both domestic and international, through the rigorous pursuit of facts, respectful dialogue among stakeholders, and a focus on the future.
About the Endowed Lecture
University of Maryland Professor of Physics and Electrical and Computer Engineering Howard Milchberg, his wife Rena, and their three children Moses, Mollie, and Max, established this lecture in memory of Howard’s late parents, Renee and Irving Milchberg. Renee and Irving were witnesses to and victims of what can happen to society when ideology and lies are accepted in lieu of facts. Howard’s own decision to study physics was motivated by a compelling need for clarity and truth, which grew out of his parents’ experiences. The Milchberg family hopes this lectureship will serve to honor the legacy of Renee and Irving by continuing to give voice to facts and evidence, vital for a civilized society.
Renee was born in Jaslo, Poland, in 1929. She contracted polio just before the German and Soviet invasions in September 1939 and underwent treatment on what became the Soviet side of the frontier. She spent the remainder of the war in a Siberian labor camp, and then in a Polish orphanage in what is now Uzbekistan, before immigrating to New York, where she had relatives. Irving was born in 1927 in Warsaw, Poland. After the German invasion and the creation of the Warsaw ghetto, his father was shot at the ghetto gate, and his sisters and mother were taken to the Treblinka death camp. Because of his light hair and blue eyes, Irving was able to hide in plain sight, becoming the leader of a gang of teenagers who sold cigarettes to German soldiers in Warsaw while smuggling food and guns to the resistance fighters. He was trained as a watchmaker in a displaced persons camp before immigrating to Canada. He moved to Niagara Falls and worked as a jeweler and later owned a souvenir and jewelry store. Irving and Renee met in 1953, when Renee visited Niagara Falls as a tourist. They were married for 58 years and in their later years moved to Toronto. Irving died in 2014 and Renee in 2017.
Renee’s story is written about in “After the Girl’s Club: How Teenaged Holocaust Survivors Built New Lives in America,” by Carole Bell Ford (Lexington Books, 2010). Irving’s story is central to “The Cigarette Sellers of Three Crosses Square” written by Holocaust survivor Joseph Ziemian (Library of Holocaust Testimonies, 1970).
