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3/13/25 - 7:30PM: Claremont Police Department (CPD) and other assisting law enforcement agencies have now determined that there is no active threat on our campus. Shelter in place order has been lifted.

Marian Miner Cook
Athenaeum

A distinctive
feature of social and
cultural life at CMC

 

50 Children: The Rescue Mission of Mr. and Mrs. Kraus

Wed, March 26, 2025
Dinner Program
Steven Pressman

Filmmaker and author Steven Pressman will screen and discuss his documentary film based on his book which tells the previously unknown story about an American couple who traveled into Nazi Germany and Nazi-occupied Vienna in 1939 to bring a group of Jewish children to the safety of the United States. At the time, 67% of Americans polled opposed a bill in the US Congress to admit refugee children. Yet leaving behind their own young children, the Krauses devised a plan, gathered paperwork, raised money, and traveled to Europe on a rescue mission of a lifetime. 

SPECIAL SCHEDULE: Dinner will be served at 5:50 pm. Film will be screened during dinner starting at 6:00 pm and will be followed by comments from Steven Pressman and audience Q & A. 

Steven Pressman was born and raised in Los Angeles and received an undergraduate degree in political science at the University of California, Berkeley. He worked as a newspaper and magazine journalist for many years, both as a reporter and editor at a variety of publications in Los Angeles, Washington DC, and San Francisco.

As a filmmaker, Pressman directed and produced 50 Children: The Rescue Mission of Mr. and Mrs. Kraus, which premiered on HBO in 2013 and received an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Historical Programming. His following film, Holy Silence, premiered on PBS in 2020. Pressman’s third film, The Levys of Monticello, has won numerous awards while screening at more than 100 film festivals around the country since its release in 2022.  His latest film, Moses Ezekiel: Portrait of a Lost Artist, began playing at film festivals in 2024. Pressman is currently in production on his next film Dust Bowls and Jewish Souls: Another Side of Woody Guthrie.

Mr. Pressman’s Athenaeum lecture is co-sponsored by the Mgrublian Center for Human Rights at Claremont McKenna College.

SPECIAL SCHEDULE: Dinner will be served at 5:50 pm. Film will be screened during dinner starting at 6:00 pm and will be followed by comments from Steven Pressman and audience Q & A. 

Registration

Meal reservations now open to everyone in the Claremont Colleges.

Marian Miner Cook Athenaeum

Claremont McKenna College
385 E. Eighth Street
Claremont, CA 91711

Contact

Phone: (909) 621-8244 
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