On June 1, the St. Louis Kaplan Feldman Holocaust Museum will host “Modern Day Genocide: Uncovering the Horrors of Atrocities Against the Uyghur People,” with featured speaker Rushan Abbas. Abbas is an Uyghur American activist whose sister, Gulshan Abbas, was taken by the Chinese government six days after her first public speech on the persecution of the Uyghurs in 2018. Abbas has not seen her sister since.  

This lecture is the museum’s Rabbi Philip and Ruth Lazowski Lecture on Holocaust and Genocide, sponsored by the Feigenbaum-Pepose Family. 

Rabbi Philip Lazowski was born in 1930 in Bielica, Poland. Following the German invasion of Poland, the Nazis forced Lazowski and his family into the Zhetel ghetto. He fled into a nearby forest and later met up with his father and brothers. They lived in the forests for three years, supplying food and information to nearby partisan groups, and were able to escape the Nazis for the duration of the war.  

The Lazowski Lecture is the first of the “Change Begins with Us” lecture series, an initiative from the Holocaust museum designed to put the museum’s mission into action and expand the reach of the Impact Lab programming. The museum is dedicated to using the history and lessons of the Holocaust to reject hatred, promote understanding and inspire change. This series will feature challenging lectures on hate, bigotry, hate crimes and genocide. It is an answer to the questions, “What do we do now that we know about the Holocaust, and how do we prevent future atrocities?”  

Abbas will provide a vivid account of the atrocities currently being perpetrated against the Uyghur people of East Turkistan (known as the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region) by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). She will delve into the CCP’s utilization of modern tactics such as transnational repression, facial recognition and surveillance, modern-day slavery, and torture, as well as the targeted persecution of Uyghur women. She will also shed light on the international response to the Uyghur genocide and discuss what is necessary to address this humanitarian crisis, including advocacy, education and global action. 

This program will take place at 6:30 p.m. on June 1 at the museum. Tickets are $12 and can be purchased online.