Seton Hill to host signing of book collecting writings of Holocaust scholar

The writings of late Holocaust scholar Eva Fleischner, and a collection of her essays recently published by Seton Hill University’s National Catholic Center for Holocaust Education, will be the focus of an April 6 book signing.

The public is invited to the 4 p.m. event in Cecilian Hall on the university’s Greensburg campus. Those attending events of more than 50 people on the campus are required to wear masks as part of the university’s covid-19 mitigation policy.

“The Memory of Goodness” draws from diverse sources in probing essays by Fleischner, a dedicated Catholic who became a pioneering Holocaust scholar and educator. In her work, she sought to affirm inclusive religious pluralism for Christians and Jews.

Fleischner served on the advisory board of the National Catholic Center for Holocaust Education. She was dedicated to “educating the world about the horrors of the Holocaust and the ways that Christians were complicit,” according to James Paharik, the center’s director.

“We hope that her words will serve as a reminder to people today and in the future of the deadly toll that disinformation and hatred takes on humankind,” he said.

“The Memory of Goodness” was edited by Holocaust scholars Carol Rittner, distinguished professor emerita of holocaust and genocide studies at Stockton University, and John K. Roth, founding director of the Mgrublian Center for Human Rights at Claremont McKenna College.

Rittner will be on hand to discuss the book and sign copies, which will be sold at a discounted rate of $14.95 plus tax.

Also, Debra Faszer-McMahon, dean of the Seton Hill School of Humanities, will discuss and sign copies of a recent book she co-edited, “A Laboratory of Her Own: Women and Science in Spanish Culture.”

Publication of the Fleischner collection is among projects at the Seton Hill center made possible by a gift from her late brother, Hans Fleischner, and his wife, Leslie. That gift also is supporting filming of oral histories of Holocaust survivors and the establishment of the Eva Fleischner Program on Truth Finding.

Eva Fleischner died July 6, 2020, in Claremont, Calif., after a long illness. Born in 1925 in Vienna, she emigrated with her family after Hitler’s annexation of Austria, moving first to England and eventually to the United States.

Her doctoral dissertation at Marquette University, “The impact of the Holocaust on German Christian theology since 1945,” was published as a book in 1975. She later served as Women’s Chair in Humanistic Studies at Marquette.

She served on the U.S. Bishop’s Office of Catholic-Jewish Relations’ Advisory Committee, the International Catholic-Jewish Historical Commission and the Committee on Church Relations and the Holocaust at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.