Holocaust Symposium Begins July 18

Story by Corinne Saunders

Dr. Michael Berenbaum, the founding director of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, will be one of the keynote speakers at the 2009 Holocaust Symposium held at the Broyhill Inn from July 18 to 23. Berenbaum is an author, film consultant and a professor of religion at the University of Judaism in Los Angeles.

ASU’s Center for Judaic, Holocaust and Peace Studies presents the Martin and Doris Rosen “Remembering the Holocaust: A Summer Symposium for Educators and the Community” from Saturday, July 18, to Thursday, July 23.

The symposium events are free and open to the public. They will all be held in the Helen Powers room at the Broyhill Inn and take place from 8:30 a.m. to noon, and then from 1:00 to 3:30 or 4:00 p.m. Evening keynote speakers will begin at 7:30 p.m.

The 8th annual Holocaust Symposium will provide approximately 40 hours of instruction, discussions and public programs for teachers, students and interested members of the community. Teachers who complete all 40 hours will receive four CEU units.

“The speakers we have are outstanding,” said Rennie Brantz, co-director of ASU’s Center for Judaic, Holocaust and Peace Studies.

This year’s speakers include Michael Berenbaum, founding director of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., and Holocaust survivor Zev Weiss, who survived Auschwitz.

“I’m expecting this symposium to be one of our best yet, [and] many of the presentations could be of value to the public as well,” Brantz said. “[I expect] between 30 and 50 people from the community to show up to hear certain points of the symposium.”

Brantz expects about 35 teachers from around North Carolina and one from Slovakia to attend the symposium.

Eastern European instructors who teach the Holocaust in their countries attend the symposium every year, and this results in “excellent discussion and discoveries,” Brantz said. “They bring a different perspective on things.”

Among other goals, the symposium strives to prepare teachers to better teach novels such as Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl and Night, which are widely used in secondary schools, Brantz said. Teachers learn information and strategies for presenting the Holocaust more effectively in middle and high schools, he added.

Over the eight years of the symposium, more than 250 teachers have networked, and often email new program ideas to each other, Brantz said.
“[The symposium is] making a difference in the way the Holocaust is presented in North Carolina,” he said.

Other symposium speakers include Harry Reicher, a scholar-in-residence at Touro Law Center at the University of Pennsylvania Law School; Dr. Peter Cohen, a professor of philosophy and religion at Clemson University; Dr. John Cox, an assistant professor of modern European history at Florida Gulf Coast University; Lee Holder, chair of the social studies department at North Lenoir High School; Mr. David Klevan, education manager in the division of outreach technology at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum; Linda Scher, education coordinator for N.C. Council on the Holocaust; and Dr. Ken Waltzer, a professor of history at Michigan State University.

The 2009 Symposium is made possible by grants from Martin and Doris Rosen, the Leon Levine Foundation and the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, Inc. - Rabbi Israel Miller Fund for Shoah Research, Documentation and Education.

For more information and a full schedule of events, click to www.holocaust.appstate.edu.

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