The National Catholic Center for Holocaust Education at Seton Hill University welcomes all members of the community to participate in its annual Kristallnacht Remembrance Service to be held Tuesday, November 7 at 6 p.m. in St. Joseph Chapel at Seton Hill.

On November 9 and 10, 1938, Nazis burned synagogues, looted Jewish homes and businesses and murdered individuals in a nationwide pogrom that came to be called Kristallnacht (“the night of broken glass.”) Author of “Escape and Return,” Fritz Ottenheimer, a German Jew who fled his country with his family at the beginning of World War II and later returned as a U.S. soldier, is the featured speaker at this year’s Kristallnacht Remembrance Service. Other local Holocaust survivors will also participate in the service, which is open to the public.

For more information on the Kristallnacht Remembrance Service, please contact the National Catholic Center for Holocaust Education at 724-830-1033 or ncche@setonhill.edu.

The National Catholic Center for Holocaust Education (NCCHE) was established on the campus of Seton Hill University in 1987. Seton Hill initiated this national Catholic movement toward Holocaust studies in response to the urging of Pope John Paul II to recognize the significance of the Shoah, the Holocaust, and to "promote the necessary historical and religious studies on this event which concerns the whole of humanity today." The NCCHE has as its primary purpose the broad dissemination of scholarship on the root causes of anti-Semitism, its relation to the Holocaust and the implications from the Catholic perspective of both for today's world. Toward this end the Center is committed to equipping scholars, especially those at Catholic institutions, to enter into serious discussion on the causes of anti-Semitism and the Holocaust; shaping appropriate curricular responses at Catholic institutions and other educational sites; sustaining Seton Hill's Catholic Institute for Holocaust Studies in Israel through a cooperative program with Yad Vashem, the Isaac Jacob Institute for Religious Law and Hebrew University; encouraging scholarship and research through conferences, publications, workshops for educators, and similar activities; sponsoring local events on the Holocaust and related topics in the University and the community and enhancing Catholic-Jewish relations.

Seton Hill University, founded by the Sisters of Charity, is a coeducational Catholic liberal arts university in Greensburg, Pa. Chartered in 1918, Seton Hill offers more than 30 undergraduate programs and nine graduate programs, including an MBA. Seton Hill brings the world to its students through its distinguished lecturers and nationally and internationally renowned centers. Recognized three times by Entrepreneur magazine as one of the nation’s Top 100 Entrepreneurial Universities, Seton Hill has also been named one of the Best in the Northeast by The Princeton Review and one of Pennsylvania’s Top 100 Businesses by Pennsylvania Business Central. In addition, Seton Hill has been named a University of Distinction by Colleges of Distinction, an organization founded by a group of concerned parents, educators and admissions professionals. For more information on Seton Hill please visit www.setonhill.edu or call 1-800-826-6234.

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Media Contacts:

Wilda Kaylor, Associate Director, National Catholic Center for Holocaust Education
724-830-1033 / kaylor@setonhill.edu

Becca Baker, Associate Director of Media Relations
724-830-1069 / 724-689-3599 (cell) / bbaker@setonhill.edu