Dr. Frank Mecklenburg, Director of Research and Chief Archivist at The Leo Baeck Institute (LBI) New York , will speak on Tuesday, October 22 at 1:45 p.m. in the Alumni Lounges (SC158) of the Robert A. Scott Student Center at Ramapo College of New Jersey about “The Crucial Year of 1938: The Fate of Jews in the Balance.” The program will be presented under the auspices of the Gross Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies and is free and open to the public.

Dr. Mecklenburg’s talk will be based on the work that he and a team of archivists, librarians and IT consultants did to create the Leo Baeck Institute‘s “1938Projekt (1938 Project),” an exciting initiative that tracked the experience of German Jews in 1938 on a day-by-day basis. The project not only provides a window into daily life under the Nazi regime, but also illustrates the way “normalcy” allows authoritarian regimes to consolidate their power and marginalize elements of the population. The LBI’s 1938Projekt, by posting one item each day that relates to what happened on the same day eighty years ago, illustrates the past and also presents a demand for us to think about what’s happening today, especially as it relates to the treatment of refugees and minorities.

Frank Mecklenburg is the Director of Research and Chief Archivist of the Leo Baeck Institute, New York. He received his Dr. Phil. in Modern German History in 1981 from the Technische Universität Berlin. In 2000, he was involved in the LBI’s move to the Center for Jewish History, as well as in the establishment of a joint archives facility with the Jewish Museum Berlin.

The Leo Baeck Institute is a research library and archive that documents the history and culture of German-speaking Jewry, primarily in the 19th and 20th centuries, but also including documents dating back to the Middle Ages. It was founded in 1955 as a repository for the books, papers, photos and documents that were salvaged from Central Europe after World War II and donated to the Institute.