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  • This week marks the Holocaust

    Asbury Park Press, NJ
    April 23 2006

    This week marks the Holocaust

    Events to target hatred, strife
    Posted by the Asbury Park Press on 04/23/06
    BY RICHARD QUINN
    STAFF WRITER


    The emptiness where the Twin Towers once stood is more than an
    unnerving scar from Sept. 11, 2001.

    It's a reminder of what killed more than 1 million Armenians in the
    first quarter of the 20th century. Of how 6 million Jews died in the
    Holocaust of World War II. Of why Rwanda, Somalia and Darfur are more
    than answers to a geography quiz.

    "This is deep-seated hatred," said Susan Rosenblum, a Lakewood High
    School teacher whose self-created class is titled "Holocaust and
    Man's Inhumanity to Man."

    Rosenblum is the keynote speaker at today's New Jersey Jewish War
    Veterans ceremony at Liberty State Park, in the shadow of the New
    York skyline torn apart when the Twin Towers collapsed Sept. 11,
    2001. The event will be held to remember the Holocaust.

    Sadly, there is a lot of hatred in history to remember this week.

    Monday is the day Armenians across the globe remember the April 24,
    1915, arrests of more than 200 Armenian community leaders in
    Constantinople. Hundreds more arrests followed and, eight years
    later, the estimated death toll was 1.5 million people.

    Tuesday is Yom HaShoah Ve-Hagevurah - a Hebrew phrase that roughly
    translates to Holocaust and Heroism Remembrance Day, although most
    people refer to it simply as Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day.

    And a week from today is a national march in Washington to protest
    the atrocities in the Darfur region of Sudan, where an estimated
    200,000 to 400,000 people have died and 2.5 million people displaced
    in a feud between ethnic Africans and Arabs.

    The thread woven between these and future genocides is hate, said
    Paul Winkler, executive director of New Jersey's Commission on
    Holocaust Education.

    In fact, this year's state-sponsored Holocaust commemorations will be
    linked to the strife in Darfur to show that the sins of the Holocaust
    are just as real today as they were in the 1930s and 1940s, Winkler
    said.

    "The importance is that the same systematic approaches have been used
    in every genocide that has occurred," he added. "It's the same
    ingredients of find someone to blame, make those people seem as
    though they are lower than human, use the bias and prejudice and
    bigotry to carry out the genocide."

    Holocaust recalled

    At the Shore region, the Holocaust is remembered most publicly.

    Across Monmouth and Ocean counties this week, schools and community
    centers will host survivors and rescuers who tell firsthand accounts
    of the world's most-talked-about genocide.

    Manfred Lindenbaum, 73, of Jackson is one of those survivors. He
    still has trouble comprehending how such crimes against humanity
    could be committed, but he speaks to schoolchildren to fuel
    understanding in today's generation.

    "When a survivor speaks, the kids listen in a different way," he
    said. "We can really testify how rapidly the deterioration of
    humanity came about."

    Fellow survivor Abe Chapnick also speaks.

    Now 75 and living Howell, he spent more than three years as a young
    man in three concentration camps in Poland and one in Germany.

    "I speak because I feel that somehow I can relieve the suffering," he
    said. "I speak because I have an obligation to all the people who
    didn't make it."

    Connecting with history

    Stories like those told by Lindenbaum and Chapnick only matter if
    someone's listening.

    Dale Daniels, executive director of the Center for Holocaust Studies
    at Brookdale Community College, said her center is working to create
    more programs to connect history to today. The center now has a
    traveling exhibit - featuring haunting black-and-white stills of
    survivors - that will be in Monmouth and Ocean counties later this
    year.

    "Unfortunately, we know they won't always be with us," Daniels said.
    "This is a way of permanently making them a part of the center."

    In her keynote address at Liberty State Park, Rosenblum will
    emphasize that education can prevent genocide.

    "Because they have become so sensitized to hatred and bigotry, they
    look at things with much different glasses," Rosenblum said. "That's
    the whole point."

    ON THE WEB: Visit our Web site, www.app.com, and click on this story
    for more information on Holocaust education in New Jersey.

    From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
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