Genocide 100Society

College of St. Elizabeth is hosting series on Holocaust and Armenian Genocide

In a continuing series, the College of St. Elizabeth’s Center for Holocaust and Genocide Education will sponsor several events in April and May that are free and open to the public, all on the campus of the college at 2 Convent Station Road, off Madison Avenue in the Convent Station section of Morris Township. Some of the events will provide professional development hours for teachers, the New Jersey Hills reports.

• A day-long symposium, “Rescuers during the Holocaust: Acts of Courage in Challenging Times,” will be held Tuesday, April 21, for teachers, students and the general public in the Dolan Performance Hall. The event will begin at 8 a.m. with registration and breakfast and end at 3 p.m. The event is co-sponsored with the N.J. Commission on Holocaust Education and the American Society for Yad Vashem and is free to all. Advance registration is required at www.cse.edu/holocaustcenter.

The keynote speaker will be Suzanne Vromen, professor emeritus of sociology at Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y., and author of 2010’s “Hidden Children of the Holocaust: Belgian Nuns and their Daring Rescue of Young Jews from the Nazis.”

The symposium’s workshops will address Jewish and non-Jewish rescuers, the New Jersey state mandate about Holocaust education, global perspectives on Holocaust education, and how to use archival documents in Holocaust education.

  • The 100th anniversary of the Armenian genocide will be marked with a program beginning at 4:30 p.m. Thursday, April 30, in the Dolan Performance Hall. An introduction will be provided by Garabed “Chuck” Haytaian, who was the Speaker of the state Assembly 1n 1991 when New Jersey passed its law to mandate Holocaust and genocide education in the schools. The event’s co-sponsors are St. Mary’s Armenian Church in Livingston and the N.J. Commission on Holocaust Education.

Following remarks by College of St. Elizabeth President Helen J. Streubert, the film “Aghet” will be shown, surveying the history of Armenia with a focus on the Armenian genocide in 1915. Poetry and music of Armenia and a selection of traditional Armenian foods will be offered.

At 7:30 p.m. the college will premiere the film “Testimonies of Armenian Genocide Survivors,” introduced by Roy Stepanian, and followed by a question-and-answer session with children and grandchildren of survivors. The keynote speaker will be Herand M. Markarian, whose topic will be “The Impact of the Armenian Genocide: 100 Years Later.”

The event is free and open to the public. Teachers who attend will receive curriculum materials for teaching about the Armenian genocide as well as certificates for professional development hours. For teachers, advance registration is required at www.cse.edu/holocaustcenter.

  • From 4 to 7:30 p.m. Thursday, May 7, a free teacher-training event, “Echoes and Reflections,” will be held in the college’s Annunciation Center. The session will prepare educators to teach students the complex history of the Holocaust in ways that stimulate engagement, critical thinking and personal understanding.

Participants will receive a teachers’ resource guide, supplementary multimedia assets and other supportive tools for educators. The session will engage teachers with the multimedia curriculum “Echoes and Reflections,” developed jointly by Yad Vashem, Israel’s official Holocaust memorial, museum and education center; the University of Southern California (USC) Shoah Foundation, and the Anti-Defamation League.

The topics for discussion will include: Studying the Holocaust, anti-Semitism, Nazi Germany, the Jewish Ghetto, the “Final Solution,” Jewish resistance, rescuers and non-Jewish resistance, survivors and liberators, perpetrators, collaborators and bystanders; and the children of the Holocaust.

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