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by PATRICK BABCOCK
Lifestyles Reporter
“After you see something as horrible as the holocaust and what it did to the Jewish community and the world, peace studies becomes absolutely necessary to me as the next step.”
With the Center for Judaic, Holocaust, and Peace Studies, professor of history and co-director of the center Rennie W. Brantz has taken that step.
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The center is a privately funded organization run from room 109 of I.G. Greer.
The center sponsors several events and activities, all meant to raise awareness of Judaism and holocaust studies.
The most important of these is the Eighth Annual Martin and Doris Rosen Summer Symposium on the Holocaust, Brantz said.
The
symposium is a week-long event where 35 to 40 public school teachers
are “prepared to teach the Holocaust better in the high school and
middle school classes,” Brantz said.
The event has previously included Elie Wiesel, author of “Night” and famous holocaust survivor.
“We
started with some random things and then my colleague and I… thought we
could do something in a summer symposium,” Brantz said. “We went to
[Former Chancellor Francis T. Borkowski], who immediately supported
this.”
The
center was created as a venue so “we could really bring attention to
these issues,” Brantz said. “And not just to the Holocaust, but to
Jewish studies and to genocide or peace studies.”
In
addition to the symposium, the center sponsors a summer study abroad
program, a library project where the center donates books to the
library and film series currently happening.
This year’s film series is a Jewish humor film series.
There is also a lecture series the center is trying to regularize, Brantz said.
The lecture series will bring Christopher Browning from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Feb. 25.
Browning is considered a premier Holocaust scholar.
Another
program sponsored by the center is an outreach program where the center
educates high school and middle school groups about the Holocaust.
The center sends various groups in the outreach program, including one very interesting coupling.
“One of
the teams that does this [consists of] a holocaust survivor… along with
another retired faculty member… whose father was an SS (Nazi) officer,”
Brantz said. “So you have a victim and the son of a perpetrator who go
out and tell their stories.”
In addition, all books in the center are available to be borrowed.
The symposium and the center are important, Brantz said, because the Holocaust hasn’t really gone away.
“The
Holocaust is not a historical issue, it’s a very much alive issue that
is present in many places,” Brantz said. “It hasn’t been forgotten. The
Holocaust continues, even in today’s news.”
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