On Shabbat, May 5-6, Dr. Shay Pilnik will be the Scholar-in-Residence. 

On Friday, he will speak at 9:00 p.m. at the Klapper home, 960 Lincoln Place, when his topic will be "Babi Yar and the Holocaust in the Soviet Union." Babi Yar, the ravine on the outskirts of Kiev, is the burial ground for more than 100,000 people, the majority of whom were Jews. He will offer a guided review of poems dedicated to the memory of the most iconic Holocaust site on Soviet soil and take a glimpse into the unique way in which the memory of the Holocaust took shape in the USSR during the Cold War.  

On Shabbat, following davening in the Main Shul, he will discuss "Why Didn’t They and Why They Did: The Story of Jewish Armed Resistance During the Holocaust."

Dr. Pilnik is the Director, Emil A. and Jenny Fish Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Yeshiva University. He is the grandson of Holocaust survivors who immigrated to Israel from the USSR about a decade after the founding of the Jewish State. Prior to becoming the Fish Center's Founding Director, he was the Executive Director of the Nathan and Esther Pelz Holocaust Education Resource Center (HERC) in Milwaukee. Under his leadership, the organization doubled both its outreach and capacity, serving schools and communities across the state of Wisconsin with programming, lectures, teacher workshops, study abroad trips, and more.

The program is sponsored by Ashley & Elli Klapper, in memory of Jack & Rose Breitkopf a"h.