Learn about Auschwitz survivor Primo Levi at Mentor Public Library

Primo Levi's Survival in Auschwitz is one of the best, if not the best, books on the subject.

To commemorate International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Mentor Public Library will host a special talk on Holocaust survivor Primo Levi at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 27, at our Main Branch.

In addition to surviving Auschwitz, Levi is renowned as both a chemist and a writer. His complete works, as well as his autobiographical Survival in Auschwitz, can be borrowed from our library.

The program will be led by our own reference librarian Dr. John Foster, who earned a doctorate degree in history with a specialization in Modern German History.

Foster will discuss how people managed to survive being sent to Auschwitz, using the examples of Levi and his contemporary Paul Steinberg.

The talk is free and open to everyone. You can register for it on MPL's website.

If you're interested in seeing more of Dr. Foster's programs, you can find them on our YouTube page, including his talks on Napoleonic France and the German Final Solution.

MPL Talks: Napoleon Bonaparte & the Age of Imagination

We host a lot of programs at Mentor Public Library and it’s hard to catch them all.

And sometimes you miss one you really wanted to see.

That’s why we’ve started MPL Talks, where we post full programs online for you to watch at your convenience. It’s not quite the same as being there. (For example, you don’t get to ask questions.) But it’s better than missing out.

Recently, our own Dr. John Foster—who, in addition to being a librarian, also has a doctorate degree in history—discussed Napoleon Bonaparte's life as part of our Austen in Autumn series. (If you're wondering what Bonaparte and Jane Austen have in common, Foster answers that question in the first few minutes of the video.)

Learn what made Bonaparte so successful on the battlefield (hint: it involves math), the terrors of a Russian winter and how the changes of Bonaparte's lifetime still affect the western world today.

If you enjoy this talk, you'll probably want to hear Foster discuss the origins of the Nazi Final Solution.

For more information on programs at Mentor Public Library, visit our event calendar; and for more videos of MPL programs and events, check out our YouTube channel.

MPL Talks: The Origins of the Final Solution

We host a lot of programs at Mentor Public Library and it's hard to catch them all.

And sometimes you miss one you really wanted to see.

That's why we've started MPL Talks, where we post full programs online for you to watch at your convenience. It's not quite the same as being there. (For example, you don't get to ask questions.) But it's better than missing out.

MPL Talks begins with a program by Dr. John Foster—one of our reference librarians who also happens to have a doctorate in German history.

In honor of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, he discussed the origins of the Nazi's Final Solution on Tuesday, Jan. 27.

How and why did Germany, the home of one of the more integrated Jewish populations in Europe, decide to systematically kill at least six million Jewish people? Watch and learn all about it.

For more information on programs at Mentor Public Library, visit our event calendar; and for more videos of MPL programs and events, check out our YouTube channel.