This was the challenge that a panel of experts—together with one Holocaust survivor—addressed at Fordham’s Lincoln Center campus on Jan. 26.

The event, “Remembering: Talking About the Holocaust in the 21st Century,” took place on the eve of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which commemorates the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp on Jan. 27, 1945.

Fred de Sam Lazaro, a correspondent for PBS NewsHour and director of the University of St. Thomas’ Under-Told Stories Project, moderated the evening, along with Peter Osnos, founder of PublicAffairs Books.

The discussion began with a screening of de Sam Lazaro’s 2022 PBS NewsHour segment on Nicky & Vera: A Quiet Hero of the Holocaust and the Children He Rescued (Norton Young Readers, 2021). Written and illustrated by Peter Sís, who was in the audience at the Jan. 26 event, it tells the story of Nicholas Winton, known as the “British Schindler,” who helped 669 children escape from Czechoslovakia just before the Nazi occupation.

One of ‘Winton’s Children’ Shares Her Story

One of those escapees, Eva Paddock, was interviewed by de Sam Lazaro at the event. She spoke just before the panel of experts addressed diminishing public awareness of the Holocaust amid a rise in disinformation and revisionism. In 1939, when she was 4, Paddock and her sister were placed by their parents on the last Kindertransport train leaving Prague and taken in by a foster family in England. Unlike the majority of “Winton’s children,” as they came to be known, Paddock was reunited with her parents in 1940.

Because she was so young, she needed people like her parents to help her fill in the gaps in her memory, she said. When they talked about their experiences, they did not dwell on the evil that drove them from their home, but on the gratitude they felt toward the British people.

She also shared the harrowing details of her father’s escape, which was made possible only because of the altruism of individuals, from an S.S. officer who looked the other way when he encountered him, to a stranger who paid for his flight from Brussels to London when he was told his Czechoslovakian money was no good with the country in enemy hands.

Educating Young People About the Holocaust

Holocaust education, which is mandated in schools in only 27 U.S. states, is due for a change, and her and her father’s stories should be a part of that change, Paddock said. Both stories show how even a single person has the potential to do enormous good.

“It has to come out of the history books and be made relevant to today’s generation, and I believe the way to do that is to reframe the way it’s taught,” she said.

“Certainly, it’s important to teach [people] to honor the millions lost, but I think it needs to be reframed to demonstrate the power of altruism and the power of one. Because of course, I look at Nicholas Winton, and here’s a prime example of the power of one.”

The panel that followed featured Judy Woodruff, senior correspondent, PBS NewsHour; Magda Teter, Ph.D., the Shvidler Chair in Judaic Studies at Fordham; James Loeffler, Ph.D., the Jay Berkowitz Professor of Jewish History at the University of Virginia; and Linda Kinstler, author of Come to This Court and Cry: How the Holocaust Ends (PublicAffairs, 2022).

Their wide-ranging conversation touched on everything from the war in Ukraine and the 2017 “Unite the Right” white supremacist rally at the University of Virginia to the challenges faced by U.S. news organizations when newsworthy politicians use extreme rhetoric that was once beyond the pale.

Building a Framework for Memories

Loeffler said that when it comes to sustaining the memory of the Holocaust, it helps to remember that many people are involved—each with a different memory. This partly explains why Russian president Vladimir Putin could make the preposterous statement that Russia was invading Ukraine to fight Nazis and fascism, he said.

“One of our challenges is to build a frame so we can build an ethical response that takes the memory and brings people back together to understand what it was and what it wasn’t,” he said, noting that Paddock’s experience is instructive.

“When she was describing her own experience … she also talked about how her memory had been nursed and supplemented by people explaining to her her experience, describing things that had happened to her family and to her when she didn’t even remember,” he said.

“Memory is not just an individual flame that we nourish. It’s a social endeavor, and one of our challenges today is to figure out how we can rebuild that frame to make Holocaust memory relevant, and also build a common understanding of the past.”

Teaching About Events Leading to the Holocaust

Teter said that discussions with her students have convinced her that it might be better to place more emphasis than in the past on the lead-up to the events of the Holocaust. It’s something she does already and feels strongly about its value.

“That is what makes it relevant because they can see the processes, they can see the mental frameworks, they can see the media environment, the propaganda work that resonates with them, and the world that they are living in,” she said.

“It doesn’t just spring up in 1933. This is an outcome of a longer process. We need to recalibrate that story to include that longer story too.”

Unreliable News Sources with a Platform

Complicating the effort to recalibrate the way that the Holocaust is taught is the fact that those who would muddy the waters with obfuscation and ambiguity have access to more communications tools than in the past. Woodruff said journalists at NewsHour have had to come up with a new construct over the last several years to cope with the shattering of the traditional news delivery model.

“How do you both cover the news, be fair, cover it all, and call out something that is not the truth, that is a lie? I will tell you flat out, I’ve had difficulty with that,” she said, because she believes you cannot call someone a liar unless you know what’s in their heart and mind, an admittedly tricky endeavor.

She and her colleagues have adjusted by explicitly labeling false information as such. But given the plethora of news sources available online now, more responsibility has fallen on us as individual consumers.

“There’s a much larger burden placed on news consumers to figure out, ‘Can I trust this, can I believe this? How do I know?’ she said.

“We’re living in a much more complex, complicated moment when it comes to understanding what to believe.”

The event, which was livestreamed, can be viewed in its entirety below.

At a WFUV gala featuring some of news media’s biggest trailblazers, pioneering broadcast journalist Judy Woodruff recalled a time during her career when women journalists were “pitted against each other” because there were few spots for women in the newsroom.

However, when Woodruff became co-anchor of PBS NewsHour with the late Gwen Ifill—making history as the first women to co-host a national nightly news show—the pair was determined to take a different route. 

“I had known Gwen for years, but had only been working with her for five or six years, and we had gotten to be good friends,” she said. “So once we were named partners on the air, we just decided nothing was going to get between us.”

The Q&A discussion, held on Nov. 1 at the Lincoln Center campus, was part of WFUV’s On the Record, a celebration of achievement in news and sports broadcasting.  Sponsors included the Susan V. Bershad Charitable Fund, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Linda Mahoney and Peter A. Smith, Charles Osgood, and the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

This year’s ceremony honored Woodruff while honoring posthumously Ifill, who died last year after battling cancer. The third honoree was the legendary sportscaster Bob Wolff, who died at age 96 this past July.

Woodruff and Ifill were recipients of the Charles Osgood Award for Excellence in Broadcast Journalism, which was presented via video by former CBS News Sunday Morning host Osgood, FCRH ’54.

Ifill’s cousin Sherrilyn Ifill, president and director-counsel of the NACCAP Legal Defense, accepted the award on behalf of the award-winning African-American correspondent. She described Ifill, who held positions at NBC News, the Washington Post, and the New York Times, as a “friend to people of America from all walks of life.”

“She was a journalist who really believed in getting the story,” she said, adding that Ifill “dug deep” to find universal experiences and was curious about other people’s perspectives.

Basketball and Baseball Hall of Fame sportscaster Wolff, who was recognized in the Guinness Book of World Records for having the longest consecutive run as a broadcaster, was honored with the Vin Scully Lifetime Achievement Award in Sports Broadcasting. Michael Kay, FCRH ’82, voice of the Yankees on the YES Network, presented the award to Rick Wolff, Wolff’s son and longtime host of The Sports Edge on WFAN Sports Radio, on his late father’s behalf.

Kay said “when word of Bob’s passing reached people in our industry, there was genuine sadness because not only did our business lose one of its giants, but the world lost one of the best people it has ever seen.”

Rick Wolff shared that his father, who covered every major sporting event and broadcasted for teams such as the New York Knicks and New York Yankees, made a name for himself when covering the Washington Senators in 1947 by cleverly giving scores during the games without saying which team was leading.

“He became very adept at how to tell stories and entertain various listeners,” he said.

Though On the Record commemorated industry legends, it also celebrated tomorrow’s broadcasters.

Fordham College at Rose Hill (FCRH) junior Kacie Candela was presented with the WFUV Award for Excellence in News Journalism, and FCRH senior John Furlong received the Bob Ahrens Award for Excellence in Sports Journalism.

Ahrens, who recently retired after 20 years as WFUV’s executive sports producer, praised WFUV alumni like master of ceremonies Alice Gainer, FCRH ’04, a CBS 2 News reporter, for being role models for up-and-coming student broadcasters.

“It is comforting to know that there is an enthusiastic and active WFUV sports and Fordham family out there [who are]eager to give back,” said Ahrens, who was also honored during the night with a special video tribute.

That was one of the messages delivered by an all-star panel of print and broadcast journalists at “The Changing of the Guard in Washington: What to Expect,” held on Jan. 15 at Fordham’s Lincoln Center campus.

Judy Woodruff, senior correspondent for The News Hour with Jim Lehrer, headlined the evening with a lecture on domestic and international issues facing Obama. She then joined the panel discussion hosted by Bill Baker, Ph.D., Claudio Acquaviva S.J. Chair and Journalist in Residence at Fordham.

The panel featured Neil Shapiro, former president of NBC News and current president of Thirteen/WNET; Jodi Kantor, Washington correspondent for The New York Times; and Caren Bohan, political correspondent for Reuters’ Washington bureau.

In her opening remarks, Woodruff noted that it was customary for journalists to be jaded about politicians who talk about change, but that there is a tangible feeling of excitement in the nation’s capitol. That is fortunate, she added, because the United States has not faced such an array of grave challenges in 75 years.

“Even the smartest experts worry about the fragility of our financial institutions,” she said. “Who would have thought that under a Republican administration and a Republican central banker, that the federal government would be bailing out Wall Street?”

Obama’s supremely self-assured nature was the subject of much discussion. Woodruff said that confidence will serve him well when working with his cabinet of political and intellectual heavyweights.

“To be sure, there’s a danger of hubris, or too much self-confidence,” she added. “As David Halberstam so greatly chronicled years ago, [it is]the arrogance of the best and the brightest. But the antidote to that is not the worst and the dumbest.”

from l to r: Jodi Kantor, Caren Bohan, Neil Shapiro and Judy Woodruff Photo By Michael Dames

Kantor, who has covered Obama since early 2007, talked about how she was assigned to poke holes in his official biography.

Even when he was a student at Harvard Law in the early 1990s, fellow students produced a parody of him talking about his background—proof that he has long been using his life story to connect with people politically. He also has an almost relentless appetite to win over people who don’t share his views, she said.

“If Obama has a flaw, and this is something that’s tripped him up a couple of times in life, he really thinks he can win everybody over,” she said. “He has a lot of confidence that he can meet somebody from a totally different culture, who he agrees on nothing about, and still form a connection to that person.”

Shapiro, who helped launch the nightly international newscast Worldfocus, said he was struck by how pragmatic Obama is. As a presidential candidate, his initial support for public financing vanished when he realized he had a 7-1 advantage over John McCain.

This might be helpful when trying to predict how he will deal with challenges abroad, which have become tightly entwined with economic and domestic policy. In addition to China, Shapiro predicted that Japan will play a huge part in the United States’ fortunes.

“Japan is the world’s second-largest economy, and where, for a time, we’ve basically ignored our issues about Japan. Now I think they’re going to be a huge force. Are they helping us and buying our debt, or not?” Shapiro said.

“As the world gets smaller—both in terms of communication and in the terms of economics—domestic politics, economic politics and international politics converge,” he said. “That will put even more pressure on the president.”

The panel was the inaugural event in the Phi Beta Kappa Lecture Series and was sponsored by the Graduate School of Education at Fordham. At the conclusion, both Baker and Woodruff were made honorary members of Phi Beta Kappa. They were honored for their dedication to furthering intellectual discourse in the public sphere.