Student-Organized Holocaust Education Symposium Teaches How to Keep Survivors鈥 Stories Alive
Featuring speakers who ranged in expertise from renowned psychologist , The Gwendolyn and Joseph Straus Professor of Psychology and Jewish Education at to artist-in-residence Sebastian Mendes, 糖心破解版鈥檚 (SHEM) brought scholars, survivors and students together for a spring symposium on the Wilf Campus.
The event explored themes in Holocaust documentation and memory, guiding audience members through the process of preserving survivor stories in their own lives. Workshops and topic discussions included the psychology of victimhood, translating historical accounts into creative expression and how to elicit stories from survivors with sensitivity.
鈥淥ur students see their past, present and future as intertwined,鈥 said , The Monique C. Katz Dean of . 鈥淎s Jews, they have a sense of history and destiny. We all feel an obligation to elicit, document and immortalize these stories.鈥
According to Mindy Sojcher, a Jewish education major at Stern College and vice president of SHEM, providing participants with skills that would enable them to preserve Holocaust memories in their own right was a major focus of the symposium. 鈥淢y grandparents are Holocaust survivors and I wanted to know for myself how to approach them, how to interview them,鈥 said Sojcher. 鈥淲e really emphasized the 鈥榟ow-to鈥 element of this event. We wanted people to walk away from these sessions with tools that will help them approach their grandparents, neighbors or other survivors and ask questions about their stories.鈥
, associate professor of speech and drama at Stern College, delivered a talk titled, 鈥淪tories of the Holocaust,鈥 and suggested asking survivors to share the parables, proverbs and folklore of their childhood as a means of preserving the culture and heritage destroyed in the Holocaust. She also emphasized the roles personal testimony and folktales have played in the survival of Jewish experience throughout history. 鈥淛ews are a people who remember,鈥 she said. 鈥淚t is through our narratives and our creative imaginations that we most effectively transmit our history, faith, traditions and values.鈥
That idea resonated with Jesse Shore, a senior majoring in philosophy with a focus in religion. 鈥淲e鈥檙e the last generation that will have direct contact with survivors,鈥 he said. 鈥淚 think that as a Jew, you have as much of an obligation to incorporate the stories of the Holocaust into your identity as you do those of the exodus from Egypt.鈥
For Mitzi Steiner, an American studies and human rights major at Barnard College, the symposium鈥檚 focus on the future was important. 鈥淭onight is more than a memorial,鈥 she said. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a night of active thinking and guidance about the best way to transmit these stories and memories into the future. We鈥檙e reaching a point where commemoration isn鈥檛 enough.鈥
Closing speaker Steffa Hassan framed the educational night with testimony from her own experience as a Holocaust survivor, a vivid reminder of the reason memory preservation is a critical focus in the Holocaust education movement. 鈥淲hat happened before is not a gone item,鈥 she said. 鈥淏y preserving the memory and traditions they tried to demolish, you are fighting yesterday鈥檚 Nazis today.鈥
The event explored themes in Holocaust documentation and memory, guiding audience members through the process of preserving survivor stories in their own lives. Workshops and topic discussions included the psychology of victimhood, translating historical accounts into creative expression and how to elicit stories from survivors with sensitivity.
鈥淥ur students see their past, present and future as intertwined,鈥 said , The Monique C. Katz Dean of . 鈥淎s Jews, they have a sense of history and destiny. We all feel an obligation to elicit, document and immortalize these stories.鈥
According to Mindy Sojcher, a Jewish education major at Stern College and vice president of SHEM, providing participants with skills that would enable them to preserve Holocaust memories in their own right was a major focus of the symposium. 鈥淢y grandparents are Holocaust survivors and I wanted to know for myself how to approach them, how to interview them,鈥 said Sojcher. 鈥淲e really emphasized the 鈥榟ow-to鈥 element of this event. We wanted people to walk away from these sessions with tools that will help them approach their grandparents, neighbors or other survivors and ask questions about their stories.鈥
The event explored themes in Holocaust documentation and memory, guiding audience members through the process of preserving survivor stories in their own lives. Workshops and topic discussions included the psychology of victimhood, translating historical accounts into creative expression and how to elicit stories from survivors with sensitivity.
鈥淥ur students see their past, present and future as intertwined,鈥 said , The Monique C. Katz Dean of . 鈥淎s Jews, they have a sense of history and destiny. We all feel an obligation to elicit, document and immortalize these stories.鈥
According to Mindy Sojcher, a Jewish education major at Stern College and vice president of SHEM, providing participants with skills that would enable them to preserve Holocaust memories in their own right was a major focus of the symposium. 鈥淢y grandparents are Holocaust survivors and I wanted to know for myself how to approach them, how to interview them,鈥 said Sojcher. 鈥淲e really emphasized the 鈥榟ow-to鈥 element of this event. We wanted people to walk away from these sessions with tools that will help them approach their grandparents, neighbors or other survivors and ask questions about their stories.鈥
