Steinacher questioned the position of Pius XII, the wartime pope, against the Nuremberg trials. In 1948, Pius XII called for an end to war crime trials under the motto of “forgive and forget.”

“The world should just forgive and forget Germany’s war crimes and instead help to rebuild the country, was the message by the pope,” said Steinacher. “In the pope’s crusade against Nuremberg, perpetrators were quickly forgiven, and the victims quickly forgotten.”

For Professor Kevin J. Madigan, Winn Professor of Ecclesiastical History and faculty dean of Eliot House, the lecture highlighted the need to continue to explore and research the Holocaust.

“The Holocaust was, or required, the seizing of power, the cooperation of a massive bureaucratic apparatus, and the use of modern technology and the weaponizing of prejudice, which a regime could use at a time of global disintegration for unspeakable destruction,” said Madigan. “As those are features of modernity, and are still with us, we remember for the future, to make ourselves alert to the possibility of catastrophe, so that we might stop tragedy long before it starts to unfold.”

Pick agreed that the talk felt illuminating and necessary, but those feelings were mixed with gratitude for those who saved her father.

“My father’s life was saved because of the efforts of a group of Harvard students,” said Pick before the talk that took place at Harvard Divinity School. “Just like my father, those students were in their 20s, and yet they did what they could to save people. What they did was fantastic. They saved people’s lives.”

The student refugees in addition to Pick were: Ernst Berliner, M.A. ’41, Ph.D. ’43; Karl Deutsch, Ph.D. ’51; Regula Frankl (Davis) ’42; Kurt Hertzfeld ’41, M.B.A. ’42; Hans Imhof ’42; Rachel Kestenberg ’40; Herman Noether, M.A. ’40, Ph.D. ’43; Walter Robichek ’42, M.P.A. ’44; George Rohrlich, Ph.D. ’43; Milos Safranek ’42; Herbert Sonthoff, M.A. ’42; George Springer ’42, Ph.D. ’54; Walter Stettner, Ph.D. ’44; Klemens von Klemperer, M.A. ’40, Ph.D. ’49; and Thomas Winner ’42, M.A. ’43.

The initiative to bring student refugees to Harvard was led by Philip Bagby ’39; Alice Burke ’39; Robert Lane ’39, Ph.D. ’50; Irving London ’39, M.D. ’43; Lucille Radlo (Gray) ’39; Robert Ridder ’41; and Abba Schwartz, LL.B. ’39.

A retired elementary teacher, Pick works in an adult learning program her mother started in 2003 in Fitchburg. The event left her with a renewed sense of the value of both the gift given to her father and the other refugees and the one they left behind.

 “The program was started to teach lessons from the Holocaust,” Pick said. “It seems to me that we could use some lessons.”