El Dorado was a nightclub in Weimar Berlin providing a safe haven for the queer community until Hitler’s rise to power. Join us for LGBTQ+ History Month to learn more about LGBTQ+ persecution during the Holocaust.
Clara Knopfler
Brief History
Clara Knopfler was born January 19, 1927 in Cehul-Silvaniei, Transylvania, a small town in northern Romania. She and her brother Zoltan were raised by their mother, Pepi, and father, Joseph. When Ms. Knopfler was 13, the Nazis invaded and she was denied public schooling, but fortunately, local scholars and the Hungarian government helped to set up a private school for Jewish children. Ms. Knopfler and her family experienced the steady growth of anti-semitism towards Jewish Transylvanians between 1940 to 1944. In 1944, they were forced into a ghetto, leaving behind all of their possesions. That June her family was transported from the ghetto to Auschwitz, where she and her mother were separated from her father and brother. But after eight days in Auschwitz, Ms. Knopfler and her mother were selected to be factory workers and were transported to a factory in the town of Riga. Their time at the factory was followed by six months digging trenches in East Prussia. Throughout the experience, Mrs. Knopfler and her mother managed to endure the treatment and survive the horrible conditions of the work camps. As Russian forces advanced, the Nazis sent the workers on a death march, and then abandoned the weak, starved workers on a rural farm. Though it took them three months, Ms. Knopfler and her mother managed to walk home to Cehul-Silvaniei. Her mother found work at a hardware store, and Ms. Knopfler took a job at the town hall while she finished her schooling. Today Ms. Knopfler talks about her experiences and is an educator and activist.
Knopfler's Videos
Stay in Touch with HGI on Social Media!
Calendar of Events
Roy J. Eidelson, PhD, is a licensed psychologist, a member of the Coalition for an Ethical Psychology, a past president of Psychologists for Social Responsibility, and the former executive director of the Solomon Asch Center for Study of Ethnopolitical Conflict at the University of Pennsylvania. He lives in the Philadelphia area.
McGill-Queen’s University Press describes Roy Eidelson’s new book—Doing Harm: How the World’s Largest Psychological Association Lost Its Way in the War on Terror—as “A thought-provoking, unflinching, scrupulously documented account of one of the darkest chapters in the recent history of psychology.” In his upcoming talk at Manhattan College, Dr. Eidelson will discuss this decades-long struggle for the soul of professional psychology. It persists today, as “dissidents” committed to fundamental do-no-harm principles continue to challenge influential insiders who are eager for ever-closer ties to the US military-intelligence establishment. This conflict, pitting ethics against expediency, has ramifications that reach well beyond psychology alone.
The Tannenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding will host an in-person event with Manhattan College (HGI) to promote the "Peacemakers in Action Podcasts," and discuss ways it can be used in the classroom. Featuring: Yehezhel Landau With Peace and Justice Studies, Dorothy Day Center, Political Science, Religious Studies
Partners: Peace and Justice Studies, Religious Studies, Political Science, The Dorothy Day Center, Campus Ministry and Action