3-MODULE COURSE: Foundational Skills in Holocaust Education

Date: May 16 - June 10, 2022
Location: Online

Examine a range of classroom content and instructional tools to support students’ study and reflection of the history of the Holocaust and its ongoing meaning in the world today through this course offered by Echoes and Reflections. This program introduces learners to:

• Sound pedagogy for teaching about the Holocaust.
• Classroom-ready comprehensive print and online resources.
• Instructional pathways to help students learn about the complex history of the Holocaust and antisemitism.
• Strategies to incorporate a range of primary sources, including visual history testimonies.

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Contemporary Antisemitism Past & Present

Date: May 12, 2022 & May 19, 2022 | 4:00 pm ET
Location: Online

To support your Holocaust and antisemitism education needs, Echoes & Reflections is partnering with the Institute for Curriculum Services (ICS) and JCRC-NY to offer a two-day free professional development series in May.

These online learning opportunities examine classroom materials to support effective teaching of contemporary antisemitism and will explore ways to support students’ ability to actively respond to and prevent antisemitism and other forms of hate in their communities.

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MINI COURSE: Analyzing Propaganda & Teaching Media Literacy

Date: May 2 - May 16, 2022
Location: Online

Explore resources to support the teaching of analyzing propaganda and media literacy through this course offered by Echoes and Reflections. After completing this module, you will be able to:

• Examine propaganda using media literacy skills.
• Identify opportunities to connect the lessons of the Holocaust with current examples of hate propaganda.
• Understand and construct activities that show the link between ideology and propaganda.

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Genocide Awareness Month Online Series

Date: April 1 - April 29, 2022 | 10:00 am ET
Location: Online via Zoom

Join this event hosted by Raritan Community College for a timely and informative Online series addressing current-day genocides during Genocide Awareness Month. This program is being facilitated by Dr. Ellen Kennedy, Executive Director of World Without Genocide. This series will focus on current-day genocides taking place. Students and community members will learn about the geography and events that unfolded to lead to the situations being confronted today in Ukraine, China, Ethiopia, and Burma/Myanmar.

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The Refugee Crisis: Connecting the Past to Today

Date: April 28, 2022 | 3:00 pm ET
Location: Online

Help students become engaged citizens by understanding the current refugee crisis. Esther Hurh, Senior Trainer for Echoes & Reflections, will explore how to make connections between the experiences of Jewish refugees during the Holocaust and the refugee situation today. This event is hosted by Echoes & Reflections.

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The Abuse & Trivialization of Holocaust Memory

Date: April 26, 2022 | 3:00 pm ET
Location: Online

Explore how the Holocaust is being misused in everyday references, to where it is losing significance. Yad Vashem educator, Yoni Berrous, will highlight how to teach about the Holocaust without trivializing it and make the memory of this tragedy relevant to students. This event is hosted by Echoes & Reflections.

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The "Final Solution" in the East

Date: April 20, 2022 | 4:00 pm ET
Location: Online

The “Holocaust by Bullets” was the model for mass extermination of Jews and Roma during the Holocaust in Eastern Europe, which differed from how the Nazi’s persecuted groups in the west. Join an educator from Yahad – In Unum who will share classroom resources for sharing this history with students. This event is hosted by Echoes & Reflections.

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"I Am Here" Film Screening

Date: Monday, April 11, 2022 | 7:00 pm ET
Location: Saint Elizabeth University Dolan Performance Hall, 2 Convent Road, Morristown, NJ

Ella Blumenthal is not your average 98-year-old. Her feisty and magnetic personality makes her past even more surprising. Follow this spirited South African Holocaust survivor as she reveals to her family her astonishing life journey and her unwavering appreciation of life.

A life-affirming documentary that celebrates the remarkable life of Ella Blumenthal. At her 98th birthday celebrations she opens up to close friends and family about her story of survival during the Holocaust, in a way she has never done before. Her recollections, depicted through dynamic 2D animation, include tales of three concentration camps, and of narrowly escaping death in a gas chamber. Along with uplifting stories, like Ella dissuading her niece from ending her life. The animation is juxtaposed with present day footage of Ella performing her weekly spiritual rituals, being active in the swimming pool and walking on the promenade in Cape Town. She is not your average grandmother, her vivacious personality and her positive outlook on life is truly inspiring. A universal message of resilience - as Ella is the epitome of the will to survive. This film could not be more relevant in a world that still defines itself by what is other.

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NJJFF: Love It Was Not

Date: April 3 - April 10, 2022
Location: Online

A young Jewish woman named Helena Citron is taken to Auschwitz, where she develops an unlikely romantic relationship with Franz Wunsch, a high-ranking SS officer. Thirty years later, a letter arrives from Wunsch’s wife asking Helena to testify on Wunsch’s behalf. Faced with an impossible decision, Helena must choose. Will she help the man who brutalized so many lives, but saved hers?

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22nd Annual New Jersey Jewish Film Festival

Date: March 20 - April 10, 2022
Location: Online

Founded in 2000 by Caren and Herbert Ford and now in its 22nd year, the New Jersey Jewish Film Festival (NJJFF) has become one of the premier Jewish cultural events in the state. NJJFF screens award-winning premieres and first run Israeli, American, and international films of Jewish interest, followed by thought-provoking post-screening discussions. In addition to the springtime festival, NJJFF offers film programs throughout the year, such as the Reel Film Series class and Extra! screenings and receptions.

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2022 Joseph and Rebecca Meyerhoff Annual Lecture
The “Citizen Other”: Citizenship Stripping in Nazi Germany and the United States

Date: Thursday, March 31, 2022 | 7:00 pm ET
Location: Online

Hitler’s government sought to violently redesign German society upon assuming power in 1933 by defining who belonged and who was excluded. During the same period, many in the United States saw America’s racial, religious, and ethnic identity in narrow and exclusive terms as well. In both Nazi Germany and the United States, leaders were determined to limit national belonging by denying civil rights and at times even stripping citizenship from those they sought to exclude. What were the similarities and differences between the two countries' views of race, rights, and belonging?

Speakers

• Dr. Amanda Frost, Ann Loeb Bronfman Distinguished Professor of Law and Government, American University
• Dr. Wolf Gruner, Shapell-Guerin Chair in Jewish Studies and Professor of History, University of Southern California, Founding Director, USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research, Member, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Academic Committee

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Classes Without Walls or Borders | A Project of the Jewish World of the ISHS in Yad Vashem

Rabbi Moshe Cohn

 

Date: March 2022

Among the many changes brought on by the Covid Pandemic is the introduction of online lectures and classes. Today’s modern classroom is not limited by time and space to the traditional classroom, but can avail themselves of a world of classes on many different topics, given by a host of talented dynamic lecturers.

Saint Elizabeth University welcomes scholars from Yad Vashem to teach two classes on Current Antisemitism to SEU Students.

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Holocaust by Bullets in the Occupied Soviet Territories

Co-sponsored by the Holocaust Resource Center of Kean University, the Holocaust Council of Jewish Federation of Greater MetroWest NJ, and Center for Holocaust and Genocide Education at Saint Elizabeth University

Date: Thursday, March 17, 2022, at 4:30 PM & March 24, 2022, at 4:30 PM
Location: Online via Zoom

On June 22, 1941, Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union. This act of war sounded the death bell for the Jewish populations of Eastern Europe. More than two million Jews were killed through the use of bullets by Nazi mobile-killing units and their collaborators. This practice of extermination has come to be designated as the “Holocaust by bullets” or “genocide by mass shooting.” The executioners massacred the victims in their villages, before the eyes of their neighbors.

Yahad – In Unum (“Together in One” in Hebrew and Latin), a Paris-based non-profit organization established in 2004 by Father Patrick Desbois, is dedicated to systematically identifying and documenting sites of those mass executions committed against the Jews and Roma in Eastern Europe. To this day, through its research, the association has conducted 195 research trips in eleven Eastern European countries, collected over 7,500 testimonies of eyewitnesses to the mass shootings, and identified over 3,100 extermination sites. YIU’s unique collection of testimonies has been made available to educate the world.

Through this 2-session webinar – each session runs for two hours – Yahad-In Unum aims at providing teachers and educators with a condensed overview of this little-known chapter of the Holocaust history, an outline of our research methodology and a number of educational tools to be used in an online or face-to-face classroom setting.

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2022 First Person Series: Susan Warsinger

Conversations with Holocaust Survivors

Holocaust survivor Susan Warsinger on her first day of school (courtesy of Susan Warsinger) and as an adult, today. US Holocaust Memorial Museum

 

Date: March 16, 2022 | 1:00 pm ET
Location: Online

When her neighbors smashed a brick through Susan’s bedroom window on the night of November 9, 1938, she was nine years old and terrified. After what is now known as Kristallnacht or the “Night of Broken Glass,” Susan’s life changed forever.

Her parents used their savings to smuggle Susan and her brother, Joseph, out of Germany to a children’s home in a Paris suburb. In June 1940, as the German military approached, Susan and Joseph fled again, and stayed with other refugees in the palace at Versailles, where they slept in the Hall of Mirrors on burlap sacks of straw.

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"I Am Here" Film Discussion with Tali Nates: Moderator, Jordy Sank: Director and Ella Blumenthal, Holocaust Survivor

Date: Thursday, March 10, 2022 | 1:00pm-2:30pm ET
Location: Online via Zoom

Ella Blumenthal is not your average 98-year-old. Her feisty and magnetic personality makes her past even more surprising. Follow this spirited South African Holocaust survivor as she reveals to her family her astonishing life journey and her unwavering appreciation of life.

A life-affirming documentary that celebrates the remarkable life of Ella Blumenthal. At her 98th birthday celebrations she opens up to close friends and family about her story of survival during the Holocaust, in a way she has never done before. Her recollections, depicted through dynamic 2D animation, include tales of three concentration camps, and of narrowly escaping death in a gas chamber. Along with uplifting stories, like Ella dissuading her niece from ending her life. The animation is juxtaposed with present day footage of Ella performing her weekly spiritual rituals, being active in the swimming pool and walking on the promenade in Cape Town. She is not your average grandmother, her vivacious personality and her positive outlook on life is truly inspiring. A universal message of resilience - as Ella is the epitome of the will to survive. This film could not be more relevant in a world that still defines itself by what is other.

 

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Confronting the Complexity of Holocaust Scholarship: Reflections on the Past, Present, and Future of Holocaust Studies

Date: Wednesday, March 9, 2022 | 3:00 p.m.
Location: Online via Zoom

Professor Lawrence Langer; the foremost scholar of the Holocaust in the field of literature and testimony discussing his research, expertise, and most recent book, 'The Afterdeath of the Holocaust', (2021).

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The Herero Genocide and the Holocaust: What are the Links?

Dr. Elizabeth R. Baer, author of The Genocidal Gaze: From German Southwest Africa to the Third Reich

Date: Wednesday, February 9, 2022 | 7:00 p.m.
Location: Online via Zoom

Sponsored by The Institute of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at RVCC and The Mercer Holocaust, Genocide & Human Rights Education Center, this webinar features Dr. Elizabeth R. Baer, author of The Genocidal Gaze: From German Southwest Africa to the Third Reich.

Dr. Baer will discuss her book, including the threads of shared ideology in the Herero and Nama genocide and the Holocaust using concepts such as racial hierarchies, living space, and the final solution that were deployed by German authorities in 1904 and again in the 1930s and 1940s to justify genocide.

The Genocidal Gaze is an original and challenging discussion of such contemporary issues as colonial practices, the Nazi concentration camp state, European and African race relations, definitions of genocide, and postcolonial theory.
 

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Fall 2021

Lucy Adlington: The Dressmakers of Auschwitz

Date: Tuesday, October 19, 2021 | 3:00 p.m.
Location: Online via Zoom

Based on her recently published book The Dressmakers of Auschwitz, Lucy Adlington retold the powerful chronicle of the women who used their sewing skills to survive the Holocaust, stitching beautiful clothes at an extraordinary fashion workshop created within one of the most notorious WWII death camps.

At the height of the Holocaust 25 young inmates of the infamous Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp – mainly Jewish women and girls – were selected to design, cut, and sew beautiful fashions for elite Nazi women in a dedicated salon. It was work that they hoped would spare them from the gas chambers. This fashion workshop, called the Upper Tailoring Studio, was established by Hedwig Höss, the camp commandant's wife, and patronized by the wives of SS guards and officers. Here, the dressmakers produced high-quality garments for SS social functions in Auschwitz, and for ladies from Nazi Berlin's upper crust.

Drawing on diverse sources, including interviews with the last surviving seamstress, The Dressmakers of Auschwitz follows the fates of these brave women. Their bonds of family and friendship not only helped them endure persecution, but also to play their part in camp resistance.

Weaving the dressmakers' remarkable experiences within the context of Nazi policies for plunder and exploitation, historian Lucy Adlington exposes the greed, cruelty, and hypocrisy of the Third Reich and offers a fresh look at a little-known chapter of World War II and the Holocaust.

This program was co-sponsored by Drew University's Center for Holocaust/Genocide Study.

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A Holocaust Journey: Lessons We Learned

Date: Monday, November 8, 2021 | 7:30 p.m.
Location: Dolan Performance Hall, Annunciation Center; Online via Zoom

In 2016, filmmaker Lisa Reznik traveled to Germany and Poland with Saint Elizabeth students, faculty, and community members to document their experiences as they visited concentration and death camps. A Holocaust Journey: Lessons We Learned captures the voices of the participants as they comprehended the full history of the Holocaust. Pinchas Gutter, a survivor of six concentration camps, traveled with the group to share the experiences of his family in Poland during the Holocaust.

The screening of A Holocaust Journey: Lessons We Learned was followed by a panel discussion detailing the making of the film and sharing the experiences of some of the participants.

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Spring 2021

Film Screening – From Cairo to the Cloud: The World of the Cairo Geniza

Date: Tuesday, February 2 – Thursday, February 4
Location: Online Screening

From Cairo to the Cloud tells the remarkable story of the discovery of manuscripts stored for centuries in a sacred storeroom, or geniza, in an ancient Cairo synagogue. The documents, including religious texts, love letters, business statements, and literary works, provide a newfound understanding of more than one thousand years of not only Jewish history, but also Christian and Muslim life in the Islamic world. This documentary screening is cosponsored by the New Jersey Jewish Film Festival.

The documentary will be available for complementary viewing on your own between February 2 at 5 PM ET and February 4 at 11 PM ET.

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Post-Screening Discussion: Filmmaker Michelle Paymar and Professor Gary Rendsburg

Date: Thursday, February 4, 2021 | 4:00 PM
Location: Meeting online via Zoom

The Center for Holocaust and Genocide Education held a post-screening discussion of From Cairo to the Cloud with filmmaker, Michelle Paymar, and Professor Gary Rendsburg, the Blanche and Irving Laurie Professor of Jewish History at Rutgers University. This post-screening discussion was co-sponsored by the New Jersey Jewish Film Festival.

We encourage you to view the complementary screening of From Cairo to the Cloud, but you do not need to view the documentary to participate in this discussion.

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Analyzing Propaganda and Teaching Media Literacy: The Holocaust as a Case Study

Date: Tuesday, March 9, 2021 | 4:30 – 6:30 PM
Location: Meeting online via Zoom

Media literacy skills have become essential for young people to successfully navigate and critically assess the ever-increasing amount of information they receive throughout their day - on social media, advertisements, television, and film. Therefore, it is crucial for students to comprehend and identify how media, both historically and in contemporary society, can be used as a tool to incite hate and violence against certain groups. This learning opportunity examines the events of the Holocaust through the lens of media, by examining propaganda deployed by the Nazis to discriminate against Jews and other minorities. Educators will gain the tools to facilitate classroom discussions on the role and impact of Nazi propaganda during the Holocaust and support their students to critically analyze media in today’s world.

Teachers will receive a certificate of completion for two hours of professional development credit. This program was co-sponsored by Echoes and Reflections.

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Teaching Today through Children’s Rights and Korczak’s Inspiration

Date: Thursday, March 18, 2021 | 4:00 – 6:00 PM
Location: Meeting online via Zoom

Ira Patacki, a former lawyer who has shifted to a career in education, will examine the children’s republic in the classroom today. The Youth Court and its emphasis on the concept of restorative justice offers an ideal way to promote individual responsibility and constructive group interaction to promote change and empower our students as stakeholders in the school community.

The SKY (Sharpsville Korczak Youth) Court arose as an organic hybrid of Korczak’s progressive vision and the concept of restorative justice. This program is part three of the three-part study seminar entitled "Children’s Rights in Our Time: The Legacy of Janusz Korczak."

It was sponsored by Drew University's Center for Holocaust/Genocide Study.

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Commemoration of Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day)

Date: Thursday, April 8, 2021 | 4:00 – 6:00 PM
Location: Meeting online via Zoom

Judith Bihaly will share her powerful story of how her mother survived Auschwitz, but her father died in forced labor in the Hungarian Army. Judith Bihaly herself survived by being hidden in a Catholic girls' school when she was nine; her twin brother Andrew survived by being hidden in a juvenile detention center. They didn’t know that they were Jewish.

Judith Bihaly will talk about identity, her brother’s fate, and about surviving without knowing who she was.

This event was sponsored by Drew University's Center for Holocaust/Genocide Study.

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The Armenian Genocide and the Modern Age
Annual Armenian Genocide Commemoration

Date: Thursday, April 29, 2021 | 7:00 – 8:00 PM
Location: Meeting online via Zoom

Peter Balakian discussed how and why the Armenian Genocide became a template for genocide committed in a modern modality and why it is a landmark event in the history of modern mass violence.

Peter Balakian is the author of seven books of poems, four books of prose, and two translations. Ozone Journal, his most recent poetry collection, won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize. Vice and Shadow: Essays on the Lyric Imagination, Poetry, Art, and Culture was published in 2016. Balakian’s highly acclaimed memoir Black Dog of Fate (1997) received the PEN/Albrand Prize for memoir and was a New York Times Notable Book. The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America’s Response received the 2005 Raphael Lemkin Prize and was a New York Times and National Bestseller as well as a New York Times Notable Book. He is also the author of Theodore Roethke's Far Fields (1989). His translation with Aris Sevag of Grigoris Balakian’s Armenian Golgotha: A Memoir of the Armenian Genocide was a Washington Post book of the year.

In 2016, the Republic of Armenia awarded Balakian with the 2016 Presidential Medal and, in 2007 the Movses Khorenatsi Medal. Other prizes and awards and civic citations include a Guggenheim Fellowship; National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship; Virginia Quarterly Review; PEN/Martha Albrand Prize for Memoir; the Raphael Lemkin Prize for the best book in English on the subject of genocide and human rights; and the Spendlove Prize for Social Justice, Tolerance, and Diplomacy. His work has been translated into a dozen languages and foreign editions including Armenian, Arabic, Bulgarian, Dutch, French, Greek, Hebrew, Russian, and Turkish.

Balakian was born in Teaneck, New Jersey. He attended Tenafly public schools and graduated from Englewood School for Boys (now Dwight-Englewood School) before earning his B.A. from Bucknell University, an M.A. from New York University, and a Ph.D. from Brown University in American Civilization. He has taught at Colgate University since 1980 where he is currently Donald M. and Constance H. Rebar Professor of the Humanities in the department of English, and the Director of Creative Writing. He was the first Director of Colgate’s Center for Ethics and World Societies.

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Fall 2020

Understanding Racism, Healing, and Reconciliation

A Discussion with Sheyann Webb-Christburg

Date: Tuesday, September 8, 2020 | 11:30 a.m.
Location: Online via Zoom

This online discussion featured Sheyann Webb-Christburg, a Civil Rights activist who participated in the Civil Rights Movement in Selma, Alabama in the 1960s. She is nationally recognized for her book Selma, Lord Selma: Girlhood Memories of the Civil Rights Days. The book was later made into a TV movie and was nominated for "Best Television Mini Series" by the NAACP Image Awards. Sheyann Webb-Christburg will also discuss contemporary social justice initiatives.

This event was co-sponsored by Saint Elizabeth University's Office of Student Engagement.

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Working Through the Trauma of the Past:

Uncovering Family History in the Holocaust and WWII

Date: Thursday, October 1, 2020 | 4:00 p.m.
Location: Online via Zoom

Barbara Gilford is the author of Heart Songs: A Holocaust Memoir about her family's history. She discussed the process of researching the relationship between her father, who survived the Holocaust, and her father's mother, who perished in Auschwitz.

Barbara began as an educator and later maintained a clinical practice in psychotherapy for almost twenty-five years. Trauma, loss and suffering in her clients engendered in her deep appreciation for the strength and resilience embedded in the human psyche and spirit. She is also an award-winning freelance writer for The New York Times and other publications.

Barbara was joined by Kerstin E. White, who helped her by translating documents and letters. Kerstin has taught German and French courses at the college level and worked as a psychotherapist. She is the author of her memoir, Little Girl Found: A German Woman's Story of Tuberculosis, Trauma and Healing. She is currently working on a new memoir about her immigration story and family history.

Kerstin illuminated the plight of non-Jewish German refugees fleeing the advancing Soviet army in the winter and spring of 1945. In talking about her mother's traumatic flight from West Prussia as a child and the story of her loss, Kerstin introduced a piece of history unknown to most Americans. In the context of inter-generational trauma, she described her own experiences as a second-generation survivor.

This program was co-sponsored by Drew University's Center for Holocaust/Genocide Study.

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America and its Jews in the 1930s

Date: Thursday, October 15, 2020 | 7:00 p.m.
Location: Online via Zoom

The United States during the 1930s, as Nazism came to power in Germany and spread to Central Europe, itself was the scene of heightened action and talk against "the Jews." Who were the Americans who joined in this chorus, some of which extolled Hitler and what motivated them? Did they actually represent a real threat? This talk explored 1930s America and the ways some Americans pinned the blame for their unease and distress on Jews, those at home and those abroad.

Dr. Hasia Diner is the Paul and Sylvia Steinberg Professor of American Jewish History at New York University. She is the author of several books, including most recently: Julius Rosenwald: Repair the World, Roads Taken: The Great Jewish Migrations to the New World and the Peddlers Who Forged the Way (finalist for the 2015 National Jewish Book Award), and We Remember with Reverence and Love: American Jews and the Myth of Silence after the Holocaust, 1945-1962 (winner of the 2009 National Jewish Book Award in American Jewish Studies).

This program was co-sponsored by Drew University's Center for Holocaust/Genocide Study.

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American Antisemitism in Historical Perspective

Date: Sunday, October 25, 2020 | 3:00 p.m.
Location: Online via Zoom

The 2020 Annual Conference of the Council of Centers on Jewish-Christian Relations (of which the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Education is a member) invited the public to attend its webinar on "American Antisemitism in Historical Perspective."

Dr. Jonathan Sarna, University Professor and Joseph H. and Belle R. Braun Professor of American Jewish History at Brandeis University and the Director of the Schusterman Center for Israel Studies, was the main speaker.

Additional speakers included Dr. Heather Miller Rubens, Executive Director and Roman Catholic Scholar at the Institute for Islamic, Christian, and Jewish Studies in Baltimore, and Rabbi Dr. Lance J. Sussman, the Senior Rabbi of Reform Congregation Keneseth Israel of Elkins Park, PA since 2001.

Dr. Victoria J. Barnett, the Director of the Programs on Ethics, Religion, and the Holocaust at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum from 2004-2019, served as moderator.

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Annual Kristallnacht Commemoration

Date: Sunday, November 8, 2020 | 2:00 p.m.
Location: Meeting online via Zoom

Janet Pfeffer Vignola, born in London at the end of World War II, arrived in the United States just before her third birthday with her parents who were Holocaust survivors. Years later, she, along with her sisters, traced her parents' journey from Europe to the United States.

As a second generation survivor, Janet frequently speaks about her parents' history as Holocaust survivors. She is the author of Salt of the Earth: An Intergenerational Journey of a Family's Life, Heartbreak, and Triumph before, during, and after the Holocaust.

Janet received a BA in Arts from Hunter College and an MA in Education from William Paterson University, where she also served as an Adjunct Professor. She also had a 25-year career as a teacher for the Roxbury Township Public Schools.

This program is co-sponsored by the Jewish Federation of Greater MetroWest and the Office of Religious and Spiritual Life at Ursinus College.

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Genocide Prevention in the Age of Extremism

Date: Tuesday, November 10, 2020 | 11:30 a.m.
Location: Meeting online via Zoom

This online discussion features Jacqueline Murekatete, an internationally recognized genocide survivor and human rights activist. Born in Rwanda, Jacqueline was nine years old when she lost her parents, all six siblings, and most of her extended family during the 1994 genocide. Jacqueline was inspired to share her story of survival and hope for the first time in 2001 after listening to the story of the late Holocaust survivor David Gewirtzman, who became a dear friend and mentor. She is the founder and president of the Genocide Survivors Foundation.

Jacqueline will share her own experiences during the Rwandan genocide and will discuss the current rise of extremism and what that means for genocide prevention.

This event is co-sponsored with SEU's Office of Student Engagement.

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Week of Holocaust Remembrance

The Center for Holocaust and Genocide Education invites the campus community and public to participate in the 30th Annual Week of Remembrance.

This commemoration officially takes place November 8-18, 2020 and includes SEU's annual Kristallnacht commemoration, a documentary film screening and feedback session, and in-class faculty sessions.

All programs are free and open to the public unless otherwise noted.

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The Relationship Between Truth and Denialism:
The Case of Turkey and the Armenian Genocide

Date: Tuesday, December 1, 2020 | 4:00 p.m.
Location: Meeting online via Zoom

This talk by Dr. Taner Akçam will examine the concept of genocide denial, particularly as it relates to the Armenian Genocide. Dr. Akçam will also discuss his latest book, Killing Orders: Talat Pasha's Telegrams and the Armenian Genocide.

Taner Akçam is Professor of History and the Robert Aram, Marianne Kaloosdian, and Stephen and Marian Mugar Chair in Armenian Genocide Studies at Clark University. Akçam is widely recognized as one of the first Turkish scholars to write extensively on the Ottoman-Turkish Genocide of the Armenians in the early-twentieth century. His books, including A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility and The Young Turks’ Crime Against Humanity: The Armenian Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing in the Ottoman Empire, received several awards.

This talk is funded by the Dadourian Foundation.

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Fall 2019

The New Nationalist Threat to Liberal Democracy

Date: Wednesday, September 18, 2019 | 4:30 p.m.
Location: Drew University, Learning Center, Room 28 (underneath the library)
For more information, email ctrholst@drew.edu

 

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Teaching Jewish Resistance during the Holocaust – Professional Development Workshop

Date: Monday, October 21, 2019 | 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.
Location: Flex Classrooms, Annunciation Center

 

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Kristallnacht Commemoration

Date: Monday, November 4, 2019 | 7:30 p.m.
Location: Dolan Performance Hall, Annunciation Center
Keynote Speaker: Dr. Peter Hayes
Lecture: "Kristallnacht: Crescendo and Overture"
Survivor and Second-Generation Survivor Testimony: Mark Schonwetter and Ann Arnold

 

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Week of Holocaust Remembrance

Date: November 4–7, 2019

 

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Global Implications of Genocide – Professional Development Workshop

Date: Monday, November 18, 2019 | 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.
Location: Flex Classrooms, Annunciation Center

 

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Spring 2019

New Jersey Working Group on Holocaust and Genocide Research Meeting

Date: Friday, February 1 | 1:00 to 3:00 p.m.
Location: Drew University
Presenter: Jennifer Rich (Rowan University): "Keepers of Memory: The Holocaust and Transgenerational Identity"
Presenter: Raz Segal (Stockton University): "Making Hungary Great Again: Mass Violence, State Building, and the Irony of Global Holocaust Memory"

The New Jersey Working Group on Holocaust and Genocide Research is a new initiative funded by the American Academy for Jewish Research, the Saint Elizabeth University Center for Holocaust and Genocide Education, and Drew University's Center for Holocaust/Genocide Study. This interdisciplinary working group encourages participation from junior and senior scholars, along with advanced graduate students, who are engaged in all disciplines and fields within Holocaust Studies, including those working on the rise of nationalism and antisemitism. The conveners also seek scholars researching other genocides to offer comparative theoretical frameworks.

Participation in this working group is by invitation only. This meeting is closed to the public.

 

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New Jersey Working Group on Holocaust and Genocide Research Meeting

Date: Friday, March 29 | 1:00 to 3:00 p.m.
Location: Drew University
Presenter: Adara Goldberg (Kean University): "Flexing its Humanitarian Arm: The Memory of the St. Louis, Canada’s Jews, and Postwar Refugee Policy"
Presenter: Larry Greene (Seton Hall University): "New Jersey Reactions to the Rise of Nazism and the Holocaust: 1933-1945"

The New Jersey Working Group on Holocaust and Genocide Research is a new initiative funded by the American Academy for Jewish Research, the Saint Elizabeth University Center for Holocaust and Genocide Education, and Drew University's Center for Holocaust/Genocide Study. This interdisciplinary working group encourages participation from junior and senior scholars, along with advanced graduate students, who are engaged in all disciplines and fields within Holocaust Studies, including those working on the rise of nationalism and antisemitism. The conveners also seek scholars researching other genocides to offer comparative theoretical frameworks.

Participation in this working group is by invitation only. This meeting is closed to the public.

 

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Free Film Screening, New Jersey Jewish Film Festival

Date: Monday, April 1 | 7:30 p.m.
Location: Dolan Performance Hall, Annunciation Center

A panel discussion with Stanlee Stahl, Executive Vice President of the Jewish Foundation for the Righteous, and individuals interviewed for the documentary, will immediately follow the film screening.

 

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Divine Mercy in Times of Division

Date: Wednesday, April 3 | 7:00 to 9:00 p.m.
Location: Dolan Performance Hall, Annunciation Center

The Department of Religious Studies and Theology at Saint Elizabeth University is sponsoring an interreligious panel discussion on the theme, "Divine Mercy in Times of Division."

The event will feature four exciting panelists:

 

• Rabbi Robert Scheinberg (Rabbi of United Synagogue of Hoboken)
• Bishop Manuel Cruz (Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of Newark – Roman Catholic)
• Reverend Carlye Hughes (Bishop of the Diocese of Newark – Episcopal)
• Aisha Linda Kaplan (Multi-faith, Multi-cultural Chaplain Resident at Morristown Medical Center – Muslim)

The panelists will explore how various understandings of divine mercy within the traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam can help inform how people address socially divisive issues such as healthcare access, immigration, and the refugee crisis. A question and answer session will follow the panel discussion, after which refreshments will be provided.

This program is free to attend.

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Holocaust and Genocide Research Symposium

Date: Friday, April 12 | 9:00 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
Location: Flex Classrooms, Annunciation Center

The Center for Holocaust and Genocide Education at Saint Elizabeth University and the Center for Holocaust/Genocide Study at Drew University invite the public to a half-day symposium exploring the latest trends in Holocaust and Genocide Studies. Discussants include Adara Goldberg (Kean University), Jonathan Golden (Drew University), Larry Greene (Seton Hall University), Joshua Kavaloski (Drew University), Peppy Margolis (Raritan Valley Community College), Jordan Nowotny (Fairleigh Dickinson University), Joanna Sliwa (Claims Conference), Kate Temoney (Montclair State University), and Amy Weiss (Saint Elizabeth University).

Nancy Sinkoff, the Academic Director of the Allen and Joan Bildner Center for the Study of Jewish Life and Associate Professor of Jewish Studies and History at Rutgers University – New Brunswick, will deliver a keynote address titled "Lucy S. Dawidowicz and the Beginning of Holocaust Studies in the United States."

This talk will explore the contribution of Lucy S. Dawidowicz (1915-1990), a post-war American Jewish public intellectual and historian, to the field of Holocaust historiography. Witness to the vital Jewish world of pre-war Vilna and to its destruction, Dawidowicz devoted her life to bringing this world to the attention of the American public. Her The War Against the Jews: 1933-1945 (1975), a classic of "intentionalist" Holocaust historiography that emphasized the centrality of Hitler’s antisemitic ideology to the Nazis' "Final Solution," burnished her reputation as an authority on East European Jewry, the Holocaust, and antisemitism, preparing her to play a principal role in the construction of postwar American Holocaust consciousness.

This talk will analyze not only her role in establishing the field of "Holocaust Studies" in the United States but also how Dawidowicz conceived of her work – in the tradition of East European Jewish historians before her – as a secular means to commemorate the dead and to cultivate Jewish national identity.

This program is funded by a Special Initiatives Grant from the American Academy for Jewish Research.

 

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Armenian Genocide Commemoration

Date: Tuesday, April 30 | 7:30 p.m.
Location: Dolan Performance Hall, Annunciation Center

The Center for Holocaust and Genocide Education is honored to announce its annual Armenian Genocide Commemoration. The evening begins with a buffet dinner consisting of traditional Armenian dishes at 6:30 PM and concludes with a program including dance performances, music, and discussion at 7:30 PM. This program is generously funded by the Dadourian Foundation.

 

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Professional Development Workshop – The Fundamentals of Genocide and the Armenian Case, Part II

Date: Monday, May 13 | 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.
Location: Flex Classrooms, Annunciation Center

Explore modern-era genocide through its prototype, the Armenian Genocide. This full-day workshop will introduce print, video, and web-based approaches to teaching about the persecution and extermination of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire during WWI, and how it became the archetype for subsequent genocides. An investigation into the history, structure, and stages of genocide will be incorporated into the day’s sessions, culminating in a discussion of genocide denial, its forms and long-term impacts. The workshop's content is new from the program offered last spring, so educators who previously attended are highly encouraged to return!

The Center for Holocaust and Genocide Education is pleased to partner with the Genocide Education Project to bring this professional development workshop to campus. This program is generously funded by a grant from the Dadourian Foundation. Breakfast, lunch, and a certificate of program completion will be provided. This program is free and open to the public, but advance registration is required.