Our speaker will be Willa Silverman, a member of our congregation and the Malvin E. and Lea P. Bank Professor of French and Jewish Studies at Penn State. She began her academic career working on the social and cultural history of France from approximately 1880 to 1914--including the unique Jewish experiences of that period. Later, she expanded her studies to include the period of the Shoa (Holocaust) and the way that French film and literature treated this traumatic time. On several occasions, she has taken students to France to gain a deeper knowledge of France's experience of the Shoah, including through meetings with survivors and a visit to the former concentration camp of Drancy. (For a report on this past year's trip, go to: http://news.psu.edu/story/402639/2016/04/07/academics/students-meet-holocaust-survivors-france. Her program will give us a glimpse into uniquely French aspects of the Holocaust.