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Susan Zuccotti: Pere Marie-Benoit and Jewish Rescue

Date of Lecture: April 15, 2015

About the Speaker: Susan Zuccotti is author of a number of award-winning books on the Holocaust, including "The Italians and the Holocaust: Persecution, Rescue, and Survival," which won the National Jewish Book Award for Holocaust Studies in the United States and the Premio Acqui Storia — Primo Lavoro in Italy; and "Under His Very Windows: The Vatican and the Holocaust in Italy," winner of the National Jewish Book Award for Jewish-Christian Relations and the Sybil Halpern Milton Prize of the German Studies Association. Her recent work is a biography titled, "Père Marie-Benoît and Jewish Rescue: How a French Priest Together with Jewish Friends Saved Thousands during the Holocaust." Zuccotti has taught Holocaust and general Western European history at Columbia College, and Barnard College, and Trinity College.

About the Talk: Zuccotti recounts the life of Père Marie-Benoît, a French Capuchin priest who worked with networks of Jews and Catholics in Marseilles, France and in Rome to hide thousands of Jews, saving them from deportation to death camps during the Holocaust. She shares insights from her interviews with Père Marie-Benoît, his friends, and those he saved, and speculates on his motivation.

The talk is supported by the Kraft-Hiatt Fund for Jewish-Christian Understanding.

Watch the lecture below or download it free from iTunes U.