LEWISTON – Bates College historian Steve Hochstadt will give a lecture on the Holocaust at 11 a.m. Sunday, May 2, at Temple Shalom Synagogue-Center.

Hochstadt will present “The Changing Understanding of the Holocaust” at 74 Bradman St. in Auburn. The public is invited to attend the talk, followed by a discussion, at no charge.

Hochstadt will discuss some of his findings from interviewing Shanghai refugees, new scholarship on the Holocaust, new Holocaust memorials and the question of whether the Holocaust is just about the Jews.

Teaching the Holocaust is among the most difficult topics for any teacher.

“I cannot face the Holocaust for my students; I can barely do it myself,” says Hochstadt, who teaches “The Holocaust in History: The Genocide of European Jews.” He turns the biennial lecture course, one of Bates’ most popular offerings, into an intense personal experience.

Several years ago, Hochstadt, a board member of the Maine Holocaust Human Rights Center, wrote the script for an Emmy-nominated video, “Maine Survivors Remember the Holocaust.” He recently published “Sources of the Holocaust,” a collection of Holocaust documents for students in courses like his own. The collection includes an excerpt from Auburn resident Judith Isaacson’s acclaimed memoir, “Seed of Sarah.”

His book “Mobility and Modernity: Migration in Germany, 1820-1889” won the Social Science History Association’s Allan Sharlin Award in 2000.

Hochstadt’s long-term research project concerns European Jewish refugees in Shanghai.

His grandparents were among those who fled Vienna to Shanghai. He and his wife, Elizabeth Tobin, associate dean of faculty and a professor of history at Bates, regularly lead Bates fall semesters in Berlin.