Professor of history Stephen M. Berk, widely known for his expertise on the Holocaust, Russia, and the Middle East, was invested Thursday as the Henry and Sally Schaffer Professor of Holocaust and Jewish Studies.
A member of the Union faculty since 1967, Berk has earned an international reputation for his teaching, writing, and research about such topics as Russian and Soviet Jewish history, the Holocaust, the American Jewish experience, and anti-Semitism.
Sonya Stahl, president of the H. Schaffer Foundation, which created the professorship, said “no one is more worthy of being the first Henry and Sally Schaffer Professor of Holocaust and Jewish Studies than you, Steve. You educate people of all ages, far and wide, something you have been doing for many years.”
Berk, who also was celebrating a birthday on Thursday, was joined at the ceremony by his wife and mother.
Union President Roger Hull said, “Steve Berk's lectures, both to his classes and to many organizations and conferences nationally and internationally, are legendary for their eloquence and knowledge.” Hull also remarked that Berk is known for delivering his eloquent lectures without notes. “As impressive as that sounds,” Berk later replied, “my wife will tell you that that is the only organized thing that I do.”
Citing Berk's “passion and desire to press for things right,” Hull recalled a lecture he gave during a College ceremony honoring historian Serge Klarsfeld's work on behalf of Holocaust studies. “Steve gave one of the most impressive talks about hatred and racism that I have ever heard.” He also recalled that Berk was instrumental in helping the College to honor at the 1995 Commencement Ceslav Mordowicz, a Polish Jew who was one of a handful of men who escaped from Auschwitz in the spring of 1944 with the purpose of bearing witness to what was transpiring there.
In a lecture at the ceremony, Berk urged the audience to study the Holocaust and racism, to understand that confronting evil requires a price, and to reserve the word “hero” for those who have suffered or fought on their behalf.
“Thanks to the generosity of the Schaffer Foundation, the study of the Holocaust and Jewish history will be taught as long as this magnificent institution, Union College, exists. For this and future generations, I am very grateful.”
Berk said the Holocaust teaches a number of important lessons including the “pernicious impact of racism and demonological thinking in general, the role of personality in history, the need to confront evil, and the meaning of heroism.
“The Holocaust, important though it might be, is not the core of the Jewish religious and historical experience,” he continued. “The Jewish people made remarkable contributions to humanity, and this chair in Holocaust and Jewish Studies will help subsequent generations of Union students to become cognizant both of the Holocaust and the role played by Jews and Judaism in world history.”
Berk, a native of New York City, received his B.A. in history from the University of Pennsylvania, his master's degree from the University of Chicago, and his Ph.D. from Columbia University. While at Columbia he also earned a certificate in Russian studies. He teaches a variety of classes at Union, including Russian history, modern history of the Middle East, history of Poland, European history, and Jewish history. He also directs the college's interdepartmental program in Russia and Eastern Europe.
For more than 25 years, Berk's annual course on the Holocaust has been one of the College's most popular courses. As a young boy during World War II, he remembers watching film footage of Nazi death camps, and the images contributed to his desire to teach about the subject. “I want students to learn about the Holocaust, in an attempt to make them aware of the evil around them now and what it takes to oppose evil,” he says. “Anti-Semitism made Auschwitz possible; indifference made it almost inevitable.”
Berk has extensive field experience and has traveled in the former Soviet Union, Israel, Egypt, and Poland. He is the author of articles in such journals as Soviet Jewish Affairs, The Oral History Review, and Canadian-American Slavic Studies and of a book, Year of Crisis, Year of Hope: Russian Jewry and the Pogroms of 1881-1882.
The H. Schaffer Foundation is named for Henry Schaffer, a Schenectady businessman and former trustee of Union. Mr. Schaffer, who left school at age 14 and later became an honorary member of Phi Beta Kappa, was well known for his support of higher education in the Capital Region and was the principal benefactor of Schaffer Library on the Union campus. He died in 1982.
In recent years, the H. Schaffer Foundation has supported Union's term abroad program and the 1998 renovation and expansion of Schaffer Library.