Survivors gather at Colorado State Capitol to mark endowed professorship in Holocaust studies at DU
Boulder’s Barbara Steinmetz approached the podium on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, her voice quivering only so slightly before a large crowd at the State Capitol.
She was at the Capitol to commemorate the endowed professorship in Holocaust and Antisemitism at the University of Denver.
Steinmetz arrived with a plea in the fight against anti-Semitism.
“Silence to the enemy only validates the perpetrator,” she said. “Your actions, outspokenness, civility and behavior changes the narrative.”
Steinmetz, 89, fled Italy as a young girl. She and her daughter Julie Shaffer were badly injured in the June 1, 2025 attack on Boulder’s Run For Their Lives vigil for hostages held in Gaza.
On this day, that attack and those injuries added an unfortunate backdrop on this 81st anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.
“When Mussolini declared that all Jews not born in Italy had to leave the country, they (her parents) were courageous when they put their possessions in storage and left with their two little girls and only what they could carry,” said Steinmetz.
Her family found a home in the only country that would accept them, the Dominican Republic.
“They courageously filled out applications to 17 countries seeking refuge for their family. These letters we received were all the same. ‘We’re very sorry for your predicament. We’re awfully sorry. We wish you good luck.’
“We had nowhere to go because no one would take us in. It took courage to head out across Europe with their young daughters, my sister and I, in tow.”
Near Steinmetz at the Capitol was another survivor, Oscar Sladek, whose family fled Nazi persecution in Slovakia.
“My father, born Oscar Staub, survived the Holocaust as a child,” Sladek said. “Twenty-eight members of his family were lost, many in concentration camps, and yet his joy and his voice were never taken.”
DU’s provost, Dr. Elizabeth Loboa, said of the endowed professorship:
“This is education designed not only to combat the borderless epidemic of anti-Semitism, but also to engage students and the community through the history and memory of the Holocaust and how that impacts us.
“Right here, right now at the University of Denver, we do not merely engage in remembrance. We commit to use memory to forge change.”
“When I look out at this grand foyer,” said Dr. Adam Rovner, director of DU’s Center for Judaic Studies, “what I see is a community of intention, a community that chooses to come together across different ages, roles, backgrounds, and institutions.
“What I see here is a community of nothing less than courage.”
Gov. Jared Polis, who lost family members in the Holocaust, applauded DU’s efforts at the Remembrance Day event.
“We know that the work to root out hatred and bigotry and to build a kind and compassionate Colorado for all is more important now than ever before,” Polis said.
“We must understand the past, understand the present to understand the future, and we’re so fortunate as a state that DU is leading the way to bring these important issues under a new professorship as we mark international Holocaust Remembrance Day.”
Added Steinmetz:
“We must educate future leaders to understand history so as to be able to respond with truth to how dehumanizing and stereotyping any group is wrong. It is literally inhumane.
“They will learn how autocrats and hateful rhetoric can rob a country of its history, destroy a society’s decency, and most of all, they will learn that it takes courage to save freedom.”
Courage. A common theme on a somber day.
© IJN 2026
