The dissolution of the Soviet Union has revealed archives which give new insight into the impact of the Holocaust in the Soviet Union, including the mass starvation and murder of Soviet Jews. Zvi Gitelman, political science professor at the University of Michigan, has studied the archives and collected oral histories of Soviet Jewish veterans of World War II, and will discuss "The Holocaust in the Soviet Union: The View from the Soviet Trenches" at 8 p.m. Wednesday, February 3, 2010, in the Blackistone Room in Anne Arundel Hall at St. Mary's College of Maryland (SMCM). For more information on the talk, which is free and open to the public, call 240-895-4277.

Gitelman studies ethnicity and politics, especially in former Communist countries and in Israel. He is writing a book on ethnic identities among Jews in Russia, Ukraine, Israel, and the United States. His forthcoming edited volumes are Revolution, Repression and Revival: the Soviet Jewish Experience and Judaism and Jewishness: The Evolution of Secular and Religious Jewish Identities. Gitelman will be introduced by Katharina von Kellenbach, SMCM professor of religious studies.

St. Mary's College of Maryland, designated the Maryland state honors college in 1992, is ranked one of the best liberal arts schools in the nation by U.S. News & World Report, Kiplinger's, and The Princeton Review. Founded in 1840 as Maryland's "monument school" commemorating the state's first capital, SMCM is the state's only public honors college.

Some 2,000 students attend the college, which has the highest graduation rate for all Maryland public colleges and universities, and an SAT average for student admissions of 1848. The school's waterfront campus along the St. Mary's River in Southern Maryland is home to the 2009 National Intercollegiate Sailing Association Co-ed champions