Arcadia University Host Judy Meisel Holocaust Survivor and Human Rights Activist, Nov. 7
Film Screening of Award-Winning DocumentaryTak for Alt: Survival of a Human Spirit
Glenside, PA—Nov. 4, 2011—Arcadia University’s Civility in Action Leadership Discussion Series hosts Judy Meisel, Holocaust survivor, human rights activist and the focus of the award-winning documentary film Tak for Alt: Survival of a Human Spirit, on Monday, Nov. 7, at 5 p.m. in the Castle Mirror Room. The film Tak for Alt: Survival of a Human Spirit will be shown. The event is free and open to the public.
The film is Meisel’s amazing story of surviving the Holocaust and her experiences during World War II and which inspired a life-long campaign against racism. Connecting Europe’s Holocaust and America’s civil rights movement, Tak for Alt opens with Meisel recalling news coverage of a 1963 race riot in Philadelphia, sparked by a black family, the Bakers, moving into an all-white neighborhood. “It was chillingly familiar,” says Meisel. “Here I was in the City of Brotherly Love, and it was like Kristallnacht, Nov. 9, 1938 and nobody was doing anything about it. So I baked some cookies and went to see the Bakers.”
The film retraces Meisel’s wartime experiences through Eastern Europe, working slave labor in a Kovno Ghetto boot factory, watching her mother disappear into the Stutthof Concentration Camp gas chamber, crawling across a frozen river after fleeing a death march, passing as a Catholic while working for the Wermacht, and finally escaping to Denmark, 16 years old and weighing forty-seven pounds. Unlike many Holocaust films that end with Liberation in 1945, Tak for Alt contextualizes these wartime events within Judy’s continuing work as a civil rights advocate and educator, utilizing her experiences as a means to combat bigotry and racism here in the United States. The film underscores that the Holocaust is not just an historical event or a Jewish issue. Acts of intolerance continue across the world today, impacting people of varying color, religion, political affiliation, and sexual orientation. Through the film, Meisel offers an example that one person can make a difference.
The Civility in Action Leadership Discussion Series is sponsored by Arcadia’s Office of Institutional Diversity in collaboration with the Campus Climate Team, Academic Affairs and the Office of Student Engagement. For more information, contact the Office of Institutional Diversity at 215-572-4088 e-mail daltonj@arcadia.edu.
About Arcadia University: Arcadia University is a top-ranked private university in metropolitan Philadelphia and a national leader in study abroad and international education. Arcadia University promises a distinctively global, integrative and personal learning experience that prepares students to contribute and prosper in a diverse and dynamic world. The 2010 Open Doors report ranks Arcadia University No. 1 in the percentage of undergraduate students studying abroad. U.S. News & World Report ranks Arcadia University among the top regional universities in the North, and as one of the top study abroad programs in the nation. The Physical Therapy program is ranked seventh in the nation.
