Honors Day Speaker Anna Rosmus Combats Bigotry
Award-winning German author Anna Rosmus, the real-life heroine of
the film “The Nasty Girl” who dedicated her life to uncovering
anti-Semitism and the Nazi past of her Bavarian hometown, will deliver
the keynote address for Alma College’s 13th annual Honors Day.
Rosmus will discuss “In Search of the Rosetta Stone” at 8 p.m.
Wednesday, April 1, in the Remick Heritage Center, Presbyterian Hall.
Admission is free and open to the public.
Anna Rosmus
Honors
Day activities continue Thursday, April 2 with the annual Honors
Convocation at 9:30 a.m. in the Remick Heritage Center. Seniors reveal
their choices for outstanding professors, and the top students are
recognized, including the 2009 winner of the Barlow Trophy, Alma’s most
prestigious academic honor. Finalists for the award are James Allen IV
of Harbor Springs, William Allen of Unionville and William “Buddy”
Scarborough III of Washington.
More than 100 Alma College students will share their original research,
creativity and talent with an audience of their peers in afternoon
sessions April 2 at various locations around campus.
Rosmus, from Passau, Germany, was a teenager when she discovered her
hometown’s hidden Nazi past. At the age of 24, she won Germany’s
prestigious Geschwister-School Award for “Resistance and Persecution in
Passau From 1933 to 1939,” which outlines the town’s history during the
Nazi era. Though celebrated on many fronts for her civil courage,
Rosmus faced a storm of opposition and threats against her life.
Her story attracted the attention of German director Michael Verhoeven,
whose 1990 film “Das Schreckliche Madchen (The Nasty Girl)” is a
fictionalized version of her story.
As a freelance writer, Rosmus has contributed numerous essays to various magazines and newspapers. Her book, Wintergreen: Suppressed Murders,
documents the atrocities in Passau at the end of the war, the murder of
2,000 Soviet prisoners, the forced abortions performed on slave
laborers in the areas, as well as the murder of infants of slave
laborers.
Her other books include Pocking: End and Renewal, Exodus: In the
Shadow of Mercy, Resistance and Persecution: Passau 1933-1939, Robert
Klein, a German Jew Looks Back, What I Think, Against The Stream:
Growing up Where Hitler Used to Live, and Out of Passau: A City Hitler Called Home. Her newest book, Ending Combat, is about the XII U.S. Corps coming to Bavaria, Austria and the Czech Republic in 1945.
She is the winner of numerous awards for her efforts to combat bigotry
and anti-Semitism, including the highest honor of the German Jewish
Community, the 1995 Galinski Prize. Twice featured on the CBS news show
“60 Minutes,” her recent work is the subject of the documentary film,
“The Nasty Girl in America.”
The American Society of Journalists and Authors chose Rosmus for its
Conscience-in-Media Award, presented in a special program at the U.S.
Holocaust Memorial Museum. In addition, she has received the Sarnat
Prize from the Anti-Defamation League for those who fight anti-Jewish
bigotry, the coveted Tucholsky death mask and the Holocaust Survivors
& Friends’ Holocaust Memorial Award.
The D.C. Chapter of the American Immigration Lawyers Association and
the American Immigration Law Foundation honored her with the Immigrant
Achievement Award as a “distinguished immigrant who through her
extraordinary endeavors has made a substantial contribution to the
United States of America and is a proud reflection of the values of
this nation.”
Posted: Wed, March 18th, 2009 at 12:31AM
