Join us for a screening of the classic film, Gentleman’s Agreement. Philip Green (Gregory Peck) is a highly respected writer who is recruited by a national magazine to write a series of articles on antisemitism in America. He's not enthusiastic about the series, mostly because he's not sure how to tackle the subject. Then it dawns on him: if he was to pretend that he was Jewish, he could then experience the degree of racism and prejudice that exists and write his story from that perspective. It takes little time for him to experience bigotry. His anger at the way he is treated also affects his relationship with Kathy Lacy (Dorothy McGuire), his publisher's niece and the person who suggested the series.

A conversation with Rachel Gordan, Avinoam Patt, Gregory Peck’s daughter, Cecilia Peck, and CJH President Gavriel Rosenfeld will follow the screening.

Part of the Center’s programming series Anne Frank in History and Memory in connection with Anne Frank The Exhibition.

Thank you to Ancestry, the Center for Jewish History’s Family History sponsor

About the Speakers
Rachel Gordan is the 2024-25 National Endowment for the Humanities Scholar in Residence at the Center for Jewish History and the Samuel "Bud" Shorstein fellow in American Jewish Culture at the University of Florida, where she teaches in the Department of Religion and the Center for Jewish Studies. Her first book, Postwar Stories: How Books Made Judaism American, was published by Oxford University Press in 2024.

Avinoam Patt is Rennert Director of the Center for the Study of Antisemitism at NYU. He previously held the Doris and Simon Konover Chair of Judaic Studies at the University of Connecticut, where he served as Director of the Center for Judaic Studies and Contemporary Jewish Life. He is the author of multiple books on Jewish responses to the Holocaust, including Finding Home and Homeland: Jewish Youth and Zionism in the Aftermath of the Holocaust (2009). He recently completed a book on the early postwar memory of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (The Jewish Heroes of Warsaw: The Afterlife of the Revolt, 2021).

His newest book, Israel and the Holocaust, was published by Bloomsbury Press as part of its Perspectives on the Holocaust series in 2024.

Cecilia Peck is an Emmy-nominated filmmaker. She directed and executive produced the current Netflix documentary series “Escaping Twin Flames.” She also directed, co-wrote, and Executive Produced the four-part docuseries “SEDUCED: Inside the NXIVM Cult for STARZ, and the Netflix feature documentary “Brave Miss World.” Her work has a focus on women’s stories and trauma informed filmmaking. She directed and produced and the Academy Award shortlisted documentary “Shut Up & Sing,” and produced “A Conversation With Gregory Peck,” a personal portrait of her father’s life and career. As an actress, she was nominated for a Golden Globe for “The Portrait,” and played the leading role in “Torn Apart”, among others. She is a graduate of Princeton University and a recipient of a DART fellowship for Ethics in Documentary from the Columbia School of Journalism.

Gavriel D. Rosenfeld is President of the Center for Jewish History and Professor of History at Fairfield University. His areas of specialization include the history of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, memory studies, and counterfactual history. He is the author of numerous books, including the co-edited volume (with Janet Ward) Fascism in America: Past and Present (Cambridge University Press, 2023), The Fourth Reich: The Specter of Nazism from World War II to the Present (Cambridge University Press, 2019), and Hi Hitler! How the Nazi Past is Being Normalized in Contemporary Culture (Cambridge University Press, 2015). He edits the blog The Counterfactual History Review and is an editor at the Journal of Holocaust Research.