09/22/2026
Library will host a screening of N**i Town, USA and a Q&A with director Peter Yost. The programming event is part of Americans and the Holocaust, a traveling exhibition from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and American Library Association (ALA) that examines the motives, pressures and fears that shaped Americans’ responses to N**ism, war and genocide in Europe during the 1930s and 1940s.
N**i Town, USA tells the largely unknown story of the 1930s German American Bund, which had scores of chapters in suburbs and big cities across the United States and represented what many believe was a real threat of fascist subversion. The Bund held joint rallies with the Ku Klux Klan and ran dozens of summer camps for children centered around N**i ideology and imagery. In February 1939, more than 20,000 Americans filled Madison Square Garden for an event billed as a “Pro-American Rally.” Images of George Washington hung next to swastikas and speakers railed against the “Jewish controlled media” and called for a return to a racially “pure” America. Its melding of patriotic values with virulent anti-Semitism raised thorny issues that we continue to wrestle with today.
Following the screening, the documentary’s writer/producer/director, Peter Yost, will
join via Zoom and participate in a Q&A with the audience. Yost is a multiple-Emmy nominated filmmaker and founder of Brooklyn-based Pangloss Films. He has created dozens of high-end documentaries for PBS, Netflix, National Geographic and others. He is a graduate of Swarthmore College and lives with his family in Brooklyn, NY.
WHEN 3:00 p.m. – 4:30 p.m., Thursday, September 24, 2026
WHERE NMSU Zuhl Library, 3rd floor (2911 McFie Circle, Las Cruces, NM 88003)
