AUGUSTA — A noted expert of Holocaust history will speak to Temple Beth El members on Friday about the history behind the relationship between Judaism and Islam.

Abraham Peck, director of the Academic Council for Post-Holocaust Christian, Jewish and Islamic Studies at the University of Southern Maine, will speak Friday after the synagogue’s Shabbat services, which start at 7:30 p.m. The talk is called “Judaism and Islam: Myth and Reality in the Clash of Civilizations.”

The discussion will address the historical roots of what Peck calls “Islam's antagonism toward Judaism.”

Peck, the son of two Holocaust survivors, was born in a displaced persons’ camp in Landsberg, Germany, the city where Adolf Hitler wrote his autobiography “Mein Kampf.” He has served as director of the American Jewish Archives in Cincinnati and the American Jewish Historical Society in New York.

The synagogue is located on Woodlawn Avenue in Augusta.