'Helpers and Bystanders' Holocaust Seminar on Oct. 13

Key note speaker is Curator of Special Exhibits at US Holocaust Memorial Museum in DC

Helpers & Bystanders: Rescue & Indifference - A Holocaust Seminar will be held Monday, Oct. 13, from 4-8 pm at the Shaw JCC. Sponsored by The Lippman School and Jewish Community Board of Akron, this is the nineteenth annual seminar run by the Akron Jewish Community for teachers and other interested learners.  Everyone in the community is invited to come and learn, though advance registration is required.

Sam Chestnut, Head of School at The Lippman School and seminar chairperson, is “delighted we can bring Dr. Susan Bachrach, Curator of Special Exhibitions at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C., to be our key note speaker. She will present the most recent exhibit she has worked on:  Some Were Neighbors: Collaboration and Complicity in the Holocaust.”  This USHMM exhibit is at the museum in Washington D.C. and also available on line at somewereneighbors.ushmm.org

The Some Were Neighbors exhibit shows that in countries across Europe tens of thousands of ordinary people actively collaborated with the German perpetrators of the Holocaust. Many more supported, tolerated, or benefited in some way from the crimes.    

Dr. Bachrach has worked on many exhibitions, including Schindler; Liberation 1945; Nazi Olympics; Flight and Rescue; and Deadly Medicine. Her publications include Tell Them We Remember, a history of the Holocaust written for younger readers, and texts for Deadly Medicine, Nazi Olympics: Berlin 1936, and Nazi Propaganda. Dr. Bachrach first began working at the Museum in 1992 as a historian and writer for the I.D. Card Project.

Esther Hexter, a longtime member of the seminar planning committee, reports “this is the fourth time our Akron area community will have the privilege of learning with high level staff from USHMM.   Each time they come they share information and ideas for how to help area students learn what the latest museum staff has discovered in their search to bring more stories, original photographs and information about the Holocaust to all of us.”

The seminar will have sessions on historical background, with Holocaust Educator Hexter, and on book and media resources –with Barbara White, from the Akron-Summit County Public Library.  The planning committee will also bring an eyewitness to speak. 

Teaching the Next Generation session will engage participants with facilitated discussion groups for teachers and community learners. Themes for each seminar correspond to the theme for the City of Akron Arts and Writing Contest for the same year.  The 2015 Contest theme is Helpers & Bystanders: Rescue & Indifference. This seminar has been approved by local professional development committees to help educators meet a portion of their continuing education requirements.

Advance registration is required. Seminar including box supper (dietary laws observed) is $18; seminar alone is $12.  Registration deadline is Oct. 6.  Contact Mary Dean at JCBA, mary_dean@jewishakron.org or 330-869-2424 for registration form; complete and return with check to JCBA c/o Holocaust Seminar, 750 White Pond Dr., Akron. OH 44320.  

Major funding comes from a grant from Rose & Larry Schwartz Holocaust Education Fund with ALEF, the Akron Legacy & Endowment Fund of the Jewish Community Board of Akron, Inc.  News of additional sponsors is forthcoming.

 

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