Eighty-one years after Auschwitz’s liberation, the University of Denver announced a new endowed role to help keep the Holocaust’s memory alive forever.
In the space west of the Capitol’s rotunda, and under the gaze of portraited former state leaders on the northern wall, DU and state officials as well as Holocaust survivors celebrated International Holocaust Remembrance Day by announcing a new, permanently-endowed Professorship in Holocaust and Antisemitism Studies at the university.
“This is education designed not only to combat the borderless epidemic of antisemitism, but also to engage students in the community through the history and memory of the Holocaust, and how it impacts us right here, right now,” said Provost Elizabeth Loboa.
The professor will join the university’s Center for Judaic Studies, which is celebrating its 50th year in 2026, officials added.
Throughout the event, attended by 200-some people, speakers stressed the importance of continuing the work to educate new generations on the history and legacy of the Holocaust. Many noted how the stories of courage and determination shared by survivors are applicable to those standing up for persecuted people today.
“We must educate future leaders to understand history so as to be able to respond with truth,” said Barbara Steinmetz, a Holocaust survivor. “They will learn how autocrats and hateful rhetoric can rob a country of its history, destroying a society’s decency.”
Steinmetz was a victim of the firebombing on Pearl Street in Boulder during a solidarity march for Israeli refugees in Gaza last June. Her family fled Italy during World War II, with she and her sister attending Catholic school in the Dominican Republic, an act aided by the school’s mother superior, who did not tell the church’s leadership that they were Jewish refugees.
Also speaking at the ceremony was Osi Sladek, a Slovak singer who described being smuggled out of his home country after the Nazis took control and sang a handful of songs in both English and Yiddish, with a pianist and string quartet providing him a musical accompaniment.
“I’m so pleased that Denver will be home to first endowed professorships of this kind, I know this will inspire change and shape future generations, who can be around the lessens of the Holocaust,” Sladek said.
The musical group, made up of the Denver Young Artists Orchestra and Tom Hagerman of the ensemble, DeVotchKa, performed two of Sladek’s father’s compositions for the audience. During the second song, a waltz, Sladek and his wife of 65 years began to dance in front of the audience; a roar of applause followed.
Gov. Jared Polis also spoke at the event, and noted that the continued rise of antisemitism in the U.S. is a call to action to make sure what transpired during the Holocaust won’t ever do so again. Steinmetz reiterated that idea in her own speech.
“Silence is the end, it only validates the perpetrator,” Steinmetz said. “Your actions, outspokenness, civility and behavior changes the narrative.”
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