At a time when many Tufts students are overwhelmed with final projects, papers, and exams, it can become all too easy to forget about things outside one's daily life. Members of Tufts Hillel hope to counter this tendency by raising awareness and renewed understanding of the Holocaust with special programming this week. The annual week of awareness coincides with Yom Ha'Shoah, the Hebrew name for Holocaust Commemoration Day, which takes place on Friday.
Tufts Hillel has held several programs on campus this week promoting Holocaust education and awareness. This year's theme is the effect of the Holocaust on children.
Students gathered Monday night to view the Academy Award-winning film Life is Beautiful, which depicts the effect of the Holocaust on a small child growing up in Italy. The screening was followed Tuesday by a discussion with New Rochelle High School teacher Neal Shultz on the reality of life for children during the Holocaust and the effect that Life is Beautiful may have on future Holocaust education.
Yesterday, students tabled in the dining halls and the campus center, handing out commemorative materials and Yahrzeit candles - used to symbolize mourning - so that students can hold their own private remembrance ceremonies. Squares of fabric were available for students to help make the commemorative quilt that organizers hope to hang on campus. Students could also take an informational card from the tables. Each of these cards, like those given to visitors to the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, traces the life and fate of one individual through the years of the Holocaust.
The cards are intended to add a more human face to the deaths of six million Jews during World War II. Their value lies in the connection that students can feel to another individual, said Lara Saipe, an organizer of the commemoration week. "It makes it much more accessible to people," she said.
Tabling on campus was followed up with a trip to the Holocaust Memorial in Boston last night, and from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. today, students will hold a name-reading vigil on the academic quad. At the vigil, students will read off the names of approximately 10,000 people who were killed during the Holocaust. The academic quad will also be covered with approximately 1.5 million kernels of popcorn, representative of the number of children killed in the Holocaust.
Tufts Hillel Program Director Lauren Bloom said that Holocaust commemorations such as this week's are vital to both understanding and remembrance. "I think that it's important for the whole community to be aware of what happened during the Holocaust," she said. "This gives us the opportunity to make others aware and to educate them about what happened."
Saipe said that it is important not to forget the Holocaust.
"The Holocaust needs to be remembered because of the impact it had at the time and because of the impact is continues to have today," she said. "People need to remember the history so that it doesn't happen again."
