FAIRFIELD — The history of anti-Nazi Germans was sadly distorted by Cold War politics, obscuring their deeds and their sacrifices. Now, playwright and author Anne Nelson will bring the inspiring story of these Holocaust heroes to light when she delivers the annual Adolph and Ruth Schnurmacher Lecture in Judaic Studies at Fairfield University on Tuesday, Dec. 1, 7:30 p.m., in the school’s Dolan School of Business Dining Room. Entitled “Germans Who Stood Up to Hitler: The Resistance Movements of Nazi Germany,” the lecture is presented by Fairfield University’s Carl and Dorothy Bennett Center for Judaic Studies.

“This talk will present some of the new research that is bringing these dramatic stories of courage and compassion to light,” said Nelson, author of Red Orchestra: The Story of the Berlin Underground and the Circle of Friends Who Resisted Hitler.

As a former war correspondent, Ms. Nelson covered conflicts in El Salvador and Guatemala and won the Livingston Award for best international reporting from the Philippines.  She was subsequently the director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, and later directed the international program at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, where she created the first curriculum in human rights reporting. She wrote The Guys, a play about her experiences in the wake of 9/11 that was first produced by New York’s Flea Theater and starred Bill Murray and Sigourney Weaver.

Nelson teaches at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. She is a graduate of Yale University, a 2005 Guggenheim fellow, and a member of the New York Institute for the Humanities and the Council on Foreign Relations. Currently, she is working on a book that will explore the dynamics of Jewish deportations from Occupied Paris in the early 1940s.

Anne Nelson’s lecture is free and open to the public.

Reservations are requested: email bennettcenter@fairfield.edu or call (203) 254-4000, ext. 2066.

CAP: Anne Nelson