29 Oct The Great Escape: Nine Jews Who Fled Hitler and Changed the World
Kati Marton (former NPR and ABC News Correspondent, author of The Great Escape)
Wednesday, October 29, 2014 / 8:00 PM
UCSB Corwin Pavilion
In her critically-acclaimed account of The Great Escape, Kati Marton follows nine survivors over the decades as they flee fascism and anti-Semitism, seek sanctuary in England and America, and set out to make their mark. The scientists Leo Szilard, Edward Teller, and Eugene Wigner enlist Albert Einstein to get Franklin Roosevelt to initiate the development of the atomic bomb. Along with John von Neuman, who pioneers the computer, they succeed in achieving that goal before Nazi Germany, ending the Second World War, and opening a new age. Arthur Koestler writes the most important anti-Communist novel of the century, Darkness at Noon. Robert Capa is the first photographer ashore on D-Day. He virtually invents photo-journalism and gives us some of the century’s most enduring records of modern warfare. Andre Kertesz pioneers modern photo-journalism, and Alexander Korda, who makes wartime propaganda films for Churchill, leaves a stark portrait of postwar Europe with The Third Man, as his fellow filmmaker, Michael Curtiz, leaves us the immortal Casablanca, a call to arms and the most famous romantic film of all time. Marton brings passion and breadth to these dramatic lives as they help invent the twentieth century. Courtesy of The Book Den, copies of The Great Escape will be available for purchase and signing at this event.
Sponsored by the Taubman Foundation Endowed Symposia in Jewish Studies, UCSB Arts & Lectures, the Dept. of Religious Studies, Congregation B’nai B’rith, the Jewish Federation of Greater Santa Barbara and Santa Barbara Hillel, and the IHC.
Website: www.ihc.ucsb.edu/endowments/taubman