March 29

Italian Dinner: 8:15PM

Lecture: 8:30PM

Dr. Efraim Zuroff

Director, Simon Wiesenthal Center – Israel office and Eastern European Affairs

Coordinator, SWC Nazi war crimes research worldwide

Born in New York, Dr. Zuroff is a graduate of Yeshiva College (1970) and obtained his M.A. and Ph.D. in Holocaust Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

For the past 36 years, he has been actively involved in the worldwide efforts to bring Nazi war criminals to trial, initially as a researcher in Israel for the Office of Special Investigations of the US Justice Department, and since 1986 as the chief Nazi-hunter of the Simon Wiesenthal Center. He is also concurrently the director of the Center’s Israel Office and Eastern European Affairs.

A noted Holocaust historian, he is the author of four books, among them Operation Last Chance; One Man’s Quest to Bring Nazi Criminals to Justice (2009) and The Response of Orthodox Jewry in the United States to the Holocaust; The Activities of the Vaad ha-Hatzala Rescue Committee 1939-1945 (2000). His most recent book Mūsiškiai; Kelionė Su Priešu (2016)[Our People; Journey With an Enemy] which chronicles Lithuanian complicity in Holocaust crimes and the efforts of all Lithuanian governments since independence to hide the important role played by local Nazi collaborators in the Shoa, has inspired a very intense and highly- significant public debate in Lithuania on this issue.

In 2008, Zuroff was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by the President of Serbia. In 2017, he received a Golden Medal of Merit from the president of Serbia.