When Neo-Nazis Came to New Orleans

Holocaust survivor Anne Levy on confronting David Duke, with creative responses by Marilyn G. Miller and Naomi Yavneh Klos

Anne Skorecki Levy survived the Lodz and Warsaw ghettos as a small child, alongside her sister and parents. After the war, the family found refuge in Louisiana. Decades later, when Holocaust denier and white supremacist David Duke ran for the U.S. Senate and for governor, Levy broke her long silence. She confronted him publicly, and her stand became central to the Stop Duke movement and to anti-racism work across the state.

Historian Lawrence N. Powell told her story in Troubled Memory: Anne Levy, the Holocaust, and David Duke’s Louisiana (2000). He found that the real subject wasn’t only what Levy remembered. It was what she chose to do with that memory: protect the community that had sheltered her.

In this special public program, part of the Jewish American and Holocaust Literature Symposium (JAHLit), Anne Levy speaks in her own words. Marilyn G. Miller (Tulane University) and Naomi Yavneh Klos (University of New Mexico) will lead the conversation. They will ask how surviving as a child, and her parents’ example, prepared her to take on powerful political figures, and what it was like to see her life become the subject of history. They will also ask what her story says to Louisiana and the country today, and how it can keep teaching once survivors can no longer tell it themselves. Both presenters will also read creative work inspired by Levy’s activism and teaching.

This is a rare chance to hear testimony directly from a survivor, now in her nineties, whose life shows that remembering can be a form of resistance, and to hear how her example continues to inspire new forms of creativity.

Anne Skorecki Levy is an educator, activist, and child Holocaust survivor. With her sister and parents, she survived the Lodz and Warsaw ghettos. She is best known for confronting former Louisiana State Representative David Duke over his Holocaust denial and white supremacist ideology during his campaigns for the U.S. Senate and governor. Her activism helped shape the Stop Duke movement and broader anti-racism efforts in Louisiana. She is the subject of Lawrence N. Powell’s Troubled Memory, and she received an honorary doctorate from Loyola University New Orleans in 2022.

Marilyn G. Miller is Professor of Latin American Literature and Culture and Sizeler Professor of Judaic Studies at Tulane University. Her work examines race, slavery, popular culture, poetry, and Jewish culture and representation in inter-American contexts. Her books include Rise and Fall of the Cosmic Race (UT Press, 2004), Port of No Return: Enemy Alien Internment in WWII New Orleans (LSU Press, 2021), Eduardo Halfon and the Itinerary of Memory (Vanderbilt UP, 2024), and the edited volume Tango Lessons (Duke UP, 2014). Her fellowships include support from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, the NEH, and the Fulbright Commission. Her current project is A Haven in Havana: How Jews and Their Allies Helped Build Cuba Libre.

Naomi Yavneh Klos is Dean of the Honors College at the University of New Mexico, where she chairs the Task Force on Jewish Identity and Inclusion. She was a Fulbright Scholar to the Vatican and to the Netherlands. Her current research asks whether learning about the Holocaust can help address contemporary antisemitism, and explores knitting as a form of resilience during the Holocaust. She previously directed the University Honors Program at Loyola University New Orleans and is committed to Holocaust pedagogy and to teaching practices that build community.

Free and open to the public; registration required.

This public program is presented as an open session of the annual Jewish American & Holocaust Literature (JAHLit) Symposium, hosted by Tulane's Jewish Studies Department.