Dr. Stephen Feinstein

[Joseph]

Stephen Feinstein died doing what he loved best
Samuel M. Edelman

March 12th 2008
Los Angeles

Tuesday March the 4th Dr. Stephen Feinstein, director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, died of an aortic aneurism that led to cardiac arrest while he was speaking at the Jewish Film Festival. Steve was 65. He died doing what he loved, what he was passionate about, what consumed him. He died talking about the Holocaust. His death leaves us, his family, his colleagues, and his friends, his students breathless, bereft, and stunned.

Steve was such a presence for all of us. He encouraged us; he supported us with positive ideas with suggestions of resources with exciting collaborations. His research and writing on art and literature of the Holocaust, getting recognition of the Armenian Genocide, on Darfur, on developing teaching materials on genocide was critical. His emails and his sharing of ideas and concerns with colleagues all over the world will be missed. He was the ultimate information source. Never to see his daily emails again is painful.

Most important of all was his gentle sense of humor and his smile. Steve was working with a group of us from the US and Poland to prepare to teach about the Holocaust to Polish teachers this summer. His death is an unbelievable loss not only to his wife and children, his colleagues, friends and students at the University of Minnesota but to all of us struggling to fight against the indifference and hate that leads to the greatest scourge of humanity—genocide.

Samuel M. Edelman, Ph.D. is dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, American Jewish University
(formerly University of Judaism) and Co-director, State of California Center of Excellence for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, Human Rights and Tolerance.

[Joseph]

Significant Lives
A Great Expert on Genocide Dies on the Job

Edwin Black
March 12th 2008

Stephen Feinstein

Of one America’s most knowledge experts on genocide suddenly passed away a few days ago.

Historian Stephen Feinstein, 65, died on the job last week during a presentation at the Minneapolis Jewish Film Festival. Feinstein lapsed mid-sentence during his remarks. His wife reportedly rushed to his side and summoned paramedics. But at the hospital nothing could be done to repair what was close to an aortic aneurism. The loss to his family, to his friends, to the community and to scholarship will be permanent.

As the founder and director the University of Minnesota's Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Feinstein was a expert on the unlimited darkness surrounding humanity’s greatest atrocities—the effort to destroy an entire people by means of genocide. His collection of books and articles was on the finest. His cavernous knowledge of the small but important details was as encyclopedic. As smart as he was, he was never afraid to learn more, and raced toward new facts the way a thirsty man runs toward water.
Feinstein fearlessly devoted himself to the spectrum of the evil, from the Holocaust, to the decimation of the American Indian, to the Turkish genocide against Armenians, to the current systematic mass murders in Darfur. He was fearless because he stood up to the politics of genocide. Although pressured and threatened by Turkish elements, he refused to desist in publicizing and documenting the Ottoman genocide against Armenians. When the USHMM in Washington tried to dismiss the Nazi-allied pogrom against Iraqi Jews, known as “the Farhud,” Feinstein refused to back down. When it came time to shine a bright light on the Carnegie Institution’s financial and scientific support for Nazi eugenics, he worked vigorously.

I knew him as a close friend, a man who responded instantly by email, but never carried a cell phone… a man who was as knowledgeable as any about current events, but refused to subscribe to cable TV… a man who invited me as a University lecturer on more than one occasion to Minneapolis, but refused to let me stay in a hotel, instead insisting I be a guest in his own home.

Like all his friends, I knew Feinstein’s other side. When one spends your entire day studying the most depressing aspects of history, two unstoppable feelings grip you. Sometimes your clinical academic stride is suddenly pierced by jolting disconsolation. Sometimes you relieve the pressure with jokes. Feinstein was a ceaseless jokester. That made him so human in a field of inhumanity, and helped those around him know that his view held that progress required rising above it—and that meant breaking free from the paralysis of evil deeds. Once he and I shared a meal of Mongolian yak in a Minneapolis ethnic restaurant. He never let me forget it, making yak jokes at almost every turn.

Since obituaries by friends can be objective only to a point, let me confess the following. I have worked closely with literally hundreds of historians and experts around the world. They have their names engraved in granite in the great centers of learning, from Berlin to Jerusalem to London. But the ones I trust the most can be counted on one hand: Bob and Sam and a few others. Feinstein in Minneapolis was amongst those five. We have lost him today, but history will remember his work for a long time.

Memorials may be sent to the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, University of Minnesota Foundation, Box 70870, St. Paul, MN 55170.

[Joseph]

MEMORIAL TRIBUTE TO DR. STEPHEN FEINSTEIN

UMN News

http://events.tc.umn.edu/event.xml?occurrence=409318

May 12 2008
MN

Monday, May 12, 2008, 7:30 p.m. in the Cowles Auditorium, Humphrey
Institute, 301 19th Ave S, Minneapolis; University of Minnesota west
bank campus.

A memorial tribute celebrating the life and accomplishments of
Dr. Stephen Feinstein, founding director of the University of Minnesota
Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, will take place at the
University of Minnesota on Monday, May 12 at 7:30 p.m. in Cowles
Auditorium, Humphrey Institute, west bank campus. Stephen Feinstein
died of an aneurysm on March 4, 2008. The event will feature music,
videos, and speakers who worked closely with Feinstein during his 10
years as director of CHGS and in his many other public activities. A
dessert reception will follow the program.

>From its founding in 1997 Feinstein built the University of Minnesota's
Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies into an educational, research
and outreach institution of international renown. He was known around
the world as an advocate for survivors of the Holocaust and other
genocides and for genocide education. Feinstein was particularly known
for his expertise on artistic expression of genocides. He possessed
an almost encyclopedic knowledge about anything Holocaust- and
genocide-related. Feinstein worked to raise awareness of all genocides
using any and all possible outlets; he was especially dedicated to
raising awareness of the Armenian genocide and was even nominated for
a regional Emmy award for a documentary on the 90th Anniversary that
he helped produce for public television. In recent years he dedicated
many CHGS events to the ongoing crisis in Darfur and to remembrance
of the Rwanda genocide. His most recent accomplishment was securing
the funding for and creating programming around the United States
Holocaust Memorial Museum exhibition "Deadly Medicine: Creating the
Master Race," currently showing at the Science Museum of Minnesota.