The Seton Hill University National Catholic Center for Holocaust Education (NCCHE) has published The Memory of Goodness, a book of probing essays by Eva Fleischner, a dedicated Catholic who became a remarkable, pioneering Holocaust scholar and educator. 

Gathered from the diverse books and journals in which they originally appeared, Fleischner’s writings focus on teaching, rescue and responsibility, and Jewish-Christian relations, the fields in which Fleischner made her most important contributions to Holocaust studies. They reveal Fleischner’s fierce and unrelenting determination to affirm the inclusive religious pluralism that flourishing post-Holocaust respect between Christians and Jews requires.

“Eva Fleischner was a dear friend of Seton Hill University and the National Catholic Center for Holocaust Education and dedicating her life to educating the world about the horrors of the Holocaust and the ways that Christians were complicit,” said Dr. James Paharik, Director of the National Catholic Center for Holocaust Education. “We are honored to be able to present her work in a comprehensive form through the publication of The Memory of Goodness, and we hope that her words will serve as a reminder to people today and in the future of the deadly toll that disinformation and hatred takes on humankind.”

The Memory of Goodness was edited by Holocaust scholars Carol Rittner and John K. Roth, who have published many books together, including most recently, Advancing Holocaust Studies. Rittner is Distinguished Professor Emerita of Holocaust and Genocide Studies and Dr. Marsha Raticoff Grossman Professor Emerita of Holocaust Studies at Stockton University. Roth is Edward J. Sexton Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and Founding Director, Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Human Rights (now the Mgrublian Center for Human Rights) at Claremont McKenna College.

The Memory of Goodness was made possible thanks to a generous commitment to Seton Hill University and the NCCHE by Eva Fleischner’s late brother Hans Fleischner and his wife, Leslie Fleischner. The Fleischners’ gift to Seton Hill has enabled the University to expand programming around Holocaust education, including the publication of The Memory of Goodness, the filming of oral histories of Holocaust survivors, and the establishment of the Eva Fleischner Program on Truth Finding.

The Memory of Goodness is available for purchase through the National Catholic Center for Holocaust Education for $22.95 (including tax, shipping and handling) online.

ABOUT DR. EVA FLEISCHNER

Eva Fleischner, Ph.D., (1925-2020) once described her life’s work as a teacher, scholar and lecturer as one of “…helping Christians to deepen their knowledge of the Jewish experience and tradition with the hope that Jews and Christians can come to a full understanding of what it means to be people of God in the world.”

Dr. Fleischner was a pioneering Catholic theologian in Christian-Jewish relations and Holocaust studies and a longtime friend of Seton Hill University and its NationalCatholic Center for Holocaust Education.

Dr. Fleischner was a founding member of the National Catholic Center for Holocaust Education’s Advisory Board and a frequent participant in the Center’s conferences. In 2014, she and her family established The Eva Fleischner, Ph.D. Endowed Fund for Visiting Scholars and Students in Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Seton Hill, which enables the university to bring scholars to campus to teach about the issues that were central to her life and work.

Born in Vienna, Austria, Dr. Fleischner and her family emigrated to England and eventually the United States after Hitler’s annexation of Austria in 1938. A graduate of Radcliffe College who was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to the University of Paris, Fleischner began her study of the Holocaust as well as Judaism and Christian antisemitism as a doctoral student at Marquette University. The focus of her doctoral dissertation “The Impact of the Holocaust on German Christian Theology Since 1945” was published as a book in 1975.

After completing her Ph.D., she accepted a position in the department of philosophy and religion at Montclair State University in New Jersey, where she taught until retirement in 1991. Her focus over the years was to awaken her fellow Christians to the riches of the Jewish tradition and the horrors of the Holocaust, in which Christianity played a part.

Dr. Fleischner was a member of the U.S. Bishop’s Office of Catholic-Jewish Relations Advisory Board; the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Christian Scholars Studying Judaism Committee; The Christian Scholars Group of the Institute for Christian and Jewish Studies; and the Board of the Milwaukee Catholic-Jewish Conference.

Dr. Fleischner was the recipient of the Nostra Aetate Award, the highest honor conferred by the National Catholic Center for Holocaust Education at Seton Hill, in recognition of her work in the area of Catholic-Jewish relations.

ABOUT THE EDITORS 

Dr. Carol Rittner, RSM, is the Distinguished Professor of Holocaust & Genocide Studies Emerita and the Dr. Marsha Raticoff Grossman Professor of Holocaust Studies Emerita at Stockton University in New Jersey. She is the author, editor, or co-editor of 20 books and numerous essays in various scholarly and educational journals about the Holocaust and other genocides of the 20th and 21st centuries. Her most recent publications include The Holocaust and the Christian World (Paulist Press/Stimulus, 2019) and Advancing Holocaust Studies (Routledge, 2021).

John K. Roth is the Edward J. Sexton Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and the Founding Director of the Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Human Rights (now the Mgrublian Center for Human Rights) at Claremont McKenna College. Roth has published hundreds of articles and reviews and authored, co-authored, or edited more than fifty books, including The Failures of Ethics: Confronting the Holocaust, Genocide, and Other Mass Atrocities (Oxford University Press), Sources of Holocaust Insight: Learning and Teaching about the Genocide (Cascade Books/Wipf and Stock), and Advancing Holocaust Studies (Routledge). Named the 1988 U.S. National Professor of the Year by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Roth has also received the Holocaust Educational Foundation’s Distinguished Achievement Award for Holocaust Studies and Research.

ABOUT THE NATIONAL CATHOLIC CENTER FOR HOLOCAUST EDUCATION

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 antisemitism, 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; 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.