SPRING 2016 - 5776
 

Dear Holocaust Educators,
Recent films, websites, books and blogs provide a growing reservoir of inter-generational experience of individuals and families, under pressure to explore, uncover and document their personal connection to the Nazi era. Three-generational research projects, second generation coming to grips with their parents' struggle to survive, third generation re-tracing their grandparents' journeys - all provide unique access to the nature of experiential transmission and interwoven connections.
 
We encourage you to explore these resources, several described below, which help us better understand the ongoing personal dimensions of historical experience.
Josey G. Fisher
Holocaust Education Consultant
 
COMMUNITY PROGRAMMING

 
"A Sacred Calling, A Pivotal Moment" -- A Conversation on the Newest Statements about the Christian-Jewish Relationship
Saint Joseph's University, Campion Student Center
Wednesday, February 24th, 7:00 p.m.-8:30 p.m.
Panel of Jewish and Christian scholars consider latest theological statements from the Vatican and Jewish leaders marking the 50th anniversary of Nostra Aetate. More information and document texts
 
"Holocaust in the Family: First Hand Accounts of Survival" with Hannah Pollin-Galay
Gershman Y, 401 South Broad Street
Wednesday, March 16th, 7:00 p.m.-8:30 p.m.
An examination of literature based on primary accounts, focusing on diverse ways individuals recall love and belonging during the Shoah. A program of the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies,
University of Pennsylvania. For tickets click here 
 
ADL's 6th Annual Walk Against Hate
Marine Parade Grounds - Navy Yard, Philadelphia
Sunday, May 15th, 8:30-11:30 a.m.


The People vs. Fritz Bauer
Kimmel Center for Performing Arts, Philadelphia
Monday, April 18, 7:30 PM 
Gripping historic thriller chronicling the apathy in post-war Germany towards the horrors of its recent past. Based on the true story of
Jewish Attorney General Bauer's pursuit of Nazi war criminals, including Eichmann, despite threats of slander. 
Centerpiece film of Philadelphia Jewish Film Festival's Cinemondays.


Two Americans Who Defied the Nazis
National Museum of American Jewish History, Philadelphia
Tuesday, May 10, 7 PM
Filmmaker Artemis Joukowsky will share excerpts from his upcoming documentary, Two Who Defied the Nazis, about Martha and Waitstill Sharp, an American social worker and Unitarian minister who provided aid to refugees fleeing Nazi persecution. Presented with the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Register at ushmm.org/events/sharp-pa

SUMMER PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
 

Gratz College Summer Institute
Melrose Park, PA
July 10-15:
--"Teaching the Holocaust" with Josey G. Fisher 
--"Holocaust Art" with Rabbi Lance J. Sussman
 
For further information, additional online summer courses
(May 24-July 19) and registration, contact Mindy Blechman
 
Holocaust and Jewish Resistance Teachers' Program:
2016 Summer Seminar
June 28-July 12
Application deadline: March 25 (competitive, rolling admission)
 
For middle and high school educators with a background in Holocaust studies. This intensive program includes historic sites, museums and memorials in Germany and Poland, with presentations by survivors, scholars and senior educators. Sponsored by the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants.
 
For details and application: http://www.hajrtp.org/program.html
For questions, contact Elaine Culbertson
 
USHMM
2016 Arthur and Rochelle Belfer National Conference for Educators
Washington, DC
English Language Arts Section: July 10-12
Social Studies Section: July 13-15
 
For secondary school, community college, and university educators with less than five years of experience teaching about the Holocaust. Rolling admission.
 
Jan Karski Institute for Holocaust Education:
Summer Certificate Program for Educators
Georgetown University, Washington, D.C.
July 10-17
Application deadline: April 15
 
Residential professional development program for high school teachers taught by Georgetown faculty and a broad range of guest lecturers, which includes access to museums and government agencies. Fulfills state requirements for public, private and parochial schools and provides Certificate in Holocaust and Genocide Studies. Competitive admission. Additional information, or contact Anna Dubinsky or 202-587-4245.
 
Bearing Witness
Paoli, PA
July 25-28
Application deadline: April 8
 
Residential professional development program for Catholic-school
educators, grades 6-12, focusing on the history of Catholic-Jewish relations and the Holocaust. Co-sponsored by the ADL and the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. For informational brochure and application, contact Randi Boyette at ADL.
 
Yad Vashem International School for Holocaust Studies:
Summer Seminar - Teaching the Shoah and Antisemitism
Jerusalem, Israel
July 3-21
Application deadline: March 31 
Academic and pedagogic immersion for English-speaking educators, including field trips to Christian and Jewish holy sites, historic locations and other Israeli museums.
See description


SUGGESTED BOOKS   
 

New Classroom Resource:
 
The Holocaust Reader: The Story of Nazi Persecution and the Impact of Hate on Humanity by Scholastic. Thirty-two page overview of the Holocaust, supplemented by online teacher's guide, anchor video (graphic images), slideshow of visual resources, annotated bibliography, ELA Teaching Guide and an interview with a Rwandan genocide survivor. Grade 7+ Online supplementary materials available here


For Middle School and Above

My Family for the War by Anne C. Voorhoeve; Speak, 2015.
Complex experience of a child saved through the Kindertransport and her challenges re-uniting with her family post-war. Winner of ALA's Batchelder Award for its translation into English from the original German.
 
The Little Lion: A Hero in the Holocaust by Nancy Wright Beasley; Posie Press, 2015.  Based on the true story of Laibale Gillman, "The Little Lion" counters devastating odds to rescue his family from the Kovno Ghetto. A fast-paced account of this courageous teen's life-risking choice.
 
We Will Not Be Silent: The White Rose Student Resistance Movement That Defied Adolf Hitler by Russell Freedman; Clarion Books (release date May 2016). Award-winning author recounts the remarkable story of Hans and Sophie Scholl, the White Rose, and their selfless campaign of active resistance to the Nazi regime despite risk of arrest and execution.
 
Unlikely Warrior: A Jewish Soldier in Hitler's Army by Georg Rauch; Square Fish, 2016. Autobiographical account of a Mischling, a young anti-Nazi of Jewish descent involved in underground resistance, then drafted into the army and stationed on the Russian Front.
 
Hidden Like Anne Frank: 14 True Stories of Survival by Marcel Prins and Peter Henk Steenhuis, translated from the Dutch by Laura Watkinson; Arthur A. Levine Books, 2016. Inspired by his mother's survival in hiding as a young child, the author interviewed other Dutch survivors, detailing their terror of exposure by collaborators as well as the bravery of their rescuers. Supplemented by expansive cross-media website. 
 
For High School and Advanced

A Brief Stop on the Road from Auschwitz by G�ran Rosenberg; Other Press, 2015. Award-winning memoir by a Swedish journalist who returns to his own childhood to tell the story of his father's experience post-Auschwitz and his agonizing struggle to reconstruct his life.

The Children of La Hille: Eluding Nazi Capture during World War II
By Walter W. Reed; Syracuse University Press, 2015. Gripping account of children rescued by Belgian women after Kristallnacht and their winter flight from Nazi soldiers into Vichy France. Drawn from interviews, journals, letters and the author's firsthand experience.
 
The Prisoners of Breendonk: Personal Histories from a World War II Concentration Camp by James M. Deem; HMH Books for Young Readers, 2015. Personal histories of those incarcerated in little-known Belgian "reception camp" are interwoven in a haunting narrative of their brutal experience, supplemented by photographs and prisoner drawings. 


NEW ONLINE FEATURES
 

The Holocaust Survivor Memoirs Program "Re:Collection"
Digital platform connecting students with survivors who built new lives in Canada. Interview footage, memoir and transcript excerpts and photographs are accessible through individual accounts or thematically, supporting students to develop classroom presentations. More
 
Yad Vashem
  • "Don't Forget Me" - Children's Personal Albums From the Holocaust
Poignant collection of albums created by eight children in ghettos, concentration camps and labor camps, on the run or in hiding from throughout Europe and Asia.  Supplemented by photographs, family history and additional artifacts. More  
 
  • DP Camps and Hachsharot in Italy After the War
Post-war experience in the Italian DP camps illustrates survivors' return to life as well as their interaction with Jewish soldiers from the Allied armies and Zionist emissaries. Important story of children's home in Selvino, village in northern Italy, where representatives from pre-state Israel cared for 800 child and adolescent survivors until they could emigrate. Includes oral testimony, photographs and documents. More 
 
  • Armenian Righteous Among the Nations - "Having witnessed the Armenian Genocide, we decided to save them"
Eleven accounts of Armenian rescue from Ukraine, Crimea, France, Hungary and Austria - where Armenians had fled subsequent to the genocide of their own people. Includes testimony, photographs and documents. More  
 
Council for Relationships: Transcending Trauma Project
New webpage with podcasts and transcription of oral testimony excerpts organized by theme, drawn from extensive research documenting experiences of survivors and their descendants. More
 
Follow My Footprints
Blog of photo-journalist Rachael Cerrotti's year-long quest to re-trace her grandmother's flight from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia to Denmark to safety in Sweden. Intertwining her own journey with that of her beloved grandmother Hanna Seckel Drucker, Rachael experiences the sites and meets the descendants of those Hanna knew 75 years earlier. More


Spring 2016
JCRC Programs 

National Days of Remembrance 
May 1-8
 
Yom HaShoah is observed from the evening of
  
Wednesday,
May 4
through the evening of Thursday,
May 5.

Annual Philadelphia Holocaust Memorial Ceremony

Sunday, April 17, 2016, 

1:00 p.m.-2:30 p.m.
16th Street and the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, Philadelphia

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One-day program for all students in grades 9-12 in the Delaware Valley, including discussion with survivors and educational workshop for teachers.
8:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m.
 
Saint Joseph's University
Tuesday, 
March 8, 2016 
(registration closed) 
 
West Chester University
Thursday,
March 10, 2016 
(registration closed) 
 
Gratz College
Monday,
March 14, 2016
Bucks County Community College
Newtown
Thursday,
March 17, 2016 
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Mordechai Anielewicz Creative Arts Competition
     
Entry deadline: Wednesday, March 9, 2016
 
For students in grades 7-12 in the Delaware Valley.  Opportunity to respond to lessons of the Holocaust through creative expression - poetry, prose, painting, sculpture, music, dance and multimedia.

 
Award Ceremony: Monday June 6, 2016

Exhibition of Visual Entries:
June 2-15, 2016
Moore College of Art and Design
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"Dorothy Freedman Memorial Conversation with a Survivor"

Sunday, 
April 17, 2016 
Breakfast program for middle and high school students preceding
ceremony,
10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
Moore College of Art and Design.
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For further information about JCRC
Holocaust programs and speakers contact 
215.832.0536. 
 
For Holocaust Education consultation, contact 


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2100 Arch Street
Philadelphia, PA 19103
215.832.0536
www.jewishphilly.org/holocaust