The voice of the aged woman describing her decision not to give her grandmother sleeping pills to ease her suffering on the train steaming toward Dachau as students and teachers stood motionless before the screen encapsulated the horror of the Holocaust.

That was the scene as a group of Garden students visited the Harriet and Kenneth Kupferberg Holocaust Research Center at Queensborough Community College. Our visit was enhanced by the presence of Mark Kupferberg, Garden class of 1973, whose family provided the funds for this project. Mark’s two sisters, Anne, Garden class of 1974 and Sarah, who attended Garden , all were present for the opening of the research center earlier this fall. You may also recognize the Kupferberg name from the Kupferberg Center for the Arts at Queens College.

The Research Center combines exhibits, a library, lectures, and most importantly, the testimony of Holocaust survivors. After viewing a short film about the search for a family after the war, our students were taken on a tour of the center, which include art works, interactive screens detailing the history of the Holocaust; they also had the opportunity to ask questions of the Center’s Executive Director, Dr. Arthur Flug.

What gives this Holocaust Center a special focus is that in the lecture room, there are striking visual exhibits detailing the seven major holocausts of the twentieth century. This part of the center has particular value in furthering the missions which is to foster the historical memory of the Holocaust but also to understand that throughout history there have been numerous other examples of this kind of human behavior. The center also presents further information on current hate crimes as it works toward fulfilling both its historical mission and to help student understand the cause of this type of behavior so that holocausts can be removed from the palette of human behavior.

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 12th, 2009 at 6:49 am and is filed under News.