Millersville University’s 42nd Conference on the Holocaust & Genocide

Through the Camera Lens: Films about the Holocaust and Genocide

Experiencing moving images through the camera lens can be a powerful psychological and social experience that fosters empathy, immersion, and remembrance. Viewing cinema about the Holocaust and genocide examines how trauma, collective memory, and historical imagery are represented, helping audiences understand this history by providing visual context for the scale of the tragedy and the historical trauma it has inflicted across generations. This year’s conference explores Holocaust- and genocide-focused cinema.

This year, we are committed to bringing you events that explore the Holocaust - and genocide - focused cinema.       

“Night & Fog” • a panel discussion and film screening

          Tuesday October 27, 2026 • 7pm
          McComsey Hall • Myers Auditorium

• 7 p.m. Dr. Meredith Scott and Dr. Stacey Irwin (Millersville University) lead a panel discussion with members of the Holocaust and Genocide Committee on the three generational "waves" of Holocaust and Genocide films and their impact.

• 7:30 p.m. Dr. Meredith Scott provides opening remarks, followed by the screening of the 1956 short documentary film Night & Fog, directed by French filmmaker Alain Resnais. The screening is followed by a Q&A about the film’s historical impact.

• Pre-panel workshop for teachers and teacher candidates “Teaching the Holocaust history through the film Night & Fog." 6:00 p.m. in Ford Atrium, McComsey Hall.  

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 Meredith Scott is an associate professor of history at the US Air Force Academy, where she teaches courses on the Holocaust, European history, genocide, and global history. In addition to serving on the board of the Western Society for French History, she chaired the Holocaust, War, and Human Rights Conference (2023) and organizes the Academy’s ongoing Holocaust education programming. She works closely with the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, facilitating annual student workshops at the Academy and participating in the museum’s on-site faculty seminars on Religion and the Holocaust and on Mass Atrocity Prevention. Her research focuses on Jewish advocacy, resistance, and survival in France and has been published in journals such as French History, French Politics, Culture and Society, Historical Reflections/Réflexions Historiques, and Urban History. She also just completed a case study of Jews in Nice that examines how a Jewish community of fewer than 500 along France’s Mediterranean border became a major hub of resistance and rescue during the Holocaust, including the Réseau Marcel that saved hundreds of children. Her first book, The Lifeline: Salomon Grumbach and the Quest for Safety (Brill, 2022), examines interwar and wartime Jewish activism in the realms of human rights, the fight against antisemitism, refugee relief, clandestinity, and survival. She is also co-editor, with Nicholas Underwood, of Jewish Ideas of France: Diaspora, Migration, and Empire (Routledge, 2025). Her current monograph project is Reconstructing Identities: Jews in Post-Holocaust France. It explores how Jews undertook the daunting task of reconstructing their lives and communities, beginning with plans and ideas envisioned while in hiding in 1944, while also aiding tens of thousands of survivors and refugees who came to France after 1945.

 

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Alan & Linda Loss Keynote Lecture

We are still planning the Alan & Linda Loss Keynote Lecture event for spring 2027. Please check back often for updates.