(PDF) (DOC) (JPG)March 5, 2012

Dr. Mitch Kahn

(MAHWAH, NJ) – On March 5th, Dr. Lorrie Greenhouse Gardella, Associate Dean, School of Graduate and Professional Studies and Professor of Social Work at St. Joseph College, Connecticut discussed her recent book The Life and Thought of Louis Lowy: Social Work through the Holocaust (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 2011) at a joint program of the Social Work Club, Hillel and the Gross Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies of Ramapo College. Her colleague and good friend, Ramapo Professor of Social Work Dr. Mitch Kahn, introduced her.

Louis Lowy (1920-1991), an international social worker and gerontologist, recorded an oral narrative that explored his activities during and after the Holocaust. It described the formative experiences of his career from caring for youth in the Terezin Ghetto/Concentration Camp and leading an escape from a death march to forming the self-government of the Deggendorf Displaced Persons Camp in the U.S. Zone of Germany after the war.

Drawing on Lowy’s oral narrative and accounts of other Holocaust survivors who witnessed his work, Gardella offered a rich portrait of Lowy’s legacy. In chronicling his life, she also illuminated the larger story about the meaning of the Holocaust in the development of the social work profession.

Dr. Lorrie Gardella

Lorrie Greenhouse Gardella received her undergraduate training at Smith College, and received both her Masters in Social Work and a law degree at the University of Connecticut. She has served in leadership positions in national social work organizations, including President, Association of Baccalaureate Social Work Directors; Board of Directors, Council on Social Work Education; and Chair, National Association of Social Workers Legal Defense Fund.

In her first book, A Dream and A Plan: A Woman’s Path to Leadership in Human Services (2004), Gardella follows the professional journeys of multicultural women leaders in order to encourage women to enter management positions.

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