This April, Rhode Island marks its first-ever Holocaust and Genocide Awareness Month, coinciding with commemoration days for the Rwandan, Cambodian, and Armenian genocides – and Monday is Holocaust Remembrance Day. A Providence-based organization is holding a special event this evening in honor of the day. Wendy Joering is the Executive Director of the Sandra Bornstein Holocaust Education Center. She spoke with afternoon host Dave Fallon about the importance of learning from the past – at a time when extremism and hateful ideas are finding their way into mainstream politics, as well as spreading online.
TRANSCRIPT:
Dave Fallon: Wendy, welcome back.
Wendy Joering: Thank you for having me.
Fallon: First of all, why is it that important to have a month dedicated to Holocaust and genocide awareness?
Joering: It is extremely important, especially with the rise of antisemitism, the rise of hate, the rise of bigotry, and prejudice of all kinds. It’s really important to remember the people that have sacrificed their lives, to honor the people that have survived and to teach the generation now and future generations why we have to make sure nothing like this ever happens again, and do our very best to combat prejudice and all forms.
Fallon: So what are some of the activities that are scheduled?
Joering: So this evening for Yom HaShoah, which is Holocaust Remembrance – which starts actually technically this evening and goes through tomorrow – we will be having a program at the Dwares JCC, which is where the Sandra Bornstein Holocaust Education Center is located. And we will have local survivors because, as I think we discussed last time I was here, we do have local survivors that live here and children of survivors that go around to schools, community centers, libraries and tell their stories. And we will be having a candlelit procession, and then there will be some music, some prayers for peace and then a dessert reception.
Fallon: Touching on recounting of that horrible experience – genocide is of course very difficult to hear about, traumatizing for some people to actually relive a history for themselves, for family members. As much as it’s about terrible atrocities, also stories of remarkable resilience and human survival too, right?
Joering: Absolutely, absolutely. When you hear what people went through, and how they survived, it’s inspirational to hear these stories. And you know, sometimes when our survivors and children of survivors are speaking at schools or community centers, no one knows what goes on behind closed doors, and there may be a child or – we only speak to seventh grade and up, once, sometimes sixth grade – who is going through a really, really bad time at home or something. And we hope that when they hear their story of survival, that it gives them hope for the future.
Fallon: How do you balance a painful story and history with the need to share these experiences?
Joering: It can be hard to balance sometimes. When we schedule speakers, we spread them out. We also do other things with our survivors and our children of [survivors]. We have conversations with them. We’ve made relationships. We laugh, we talk and we formed, I feel we really formed bonds.
Fallon: As we lose the direct Holocaust survivors in time, how do you keep their stories going?
Joering: So we videoed them, we have quotes, we take lots of pictures, and we tell their stories. And they tell their stories to as many people as possible, because this is the last generation that we’ll be able to hear. We video them and we have a project that we’ll be able to show sometime this summer down at our memorial where you’ll be able to hold your phone and, you know, SKU and then you’ll be able to see one of our survivors telling the piece of their story.
Fallon: Is there a particular story you could share with us from one of the survivors that you work with?
Joering: Yes. So one of our survivors, Alice, her husband, actually, who is no longer with us, a little more than 35 years ago, had a dream to have a Holocaust education center. He had never wanted to talk about Holocaust education. But then a book about Holocaust denial came out. And he said, “this is not going to happen while I’m still alive, we need to make sure that people know this really did happen. I was there. These are the numbers on my arm. I don’t have any family left.” So he was one of the people that started to form the Holocaust center. And Alice talks, tells his story. And then she tells her story. So she talks about that. And when she tells her story, she says every night she still has a little cracker or a cookie before she goes to bed. Because even after all these years, she can’t be 100% sure there’ll be food the next day.
Fallon: Wow.
Joering: So that really sticks with with anyone, teens, adults, anyone that hears that.
Fallon: Has the organization been able to branch out into other described Holocausts around the world?
Joering: Yes, we have. So we started a new program this year, LIFT – Leadership Institute for Teens – where Jewish and non-Jewish kids came together and learned about lessons of the Holocaust, other genocides, other atrocities and social justice issues. So they can help make change in the world’s future and do our little part. It was so successful that we’re launching two cohorts in September in Providence and in the East Bay somewhere. And we have partnered with other communities. We had a survivor of the Rwandan genocide come in and speak in September to over 500 students, Moses Crown hosted us, and there were kids from six different schools there. So we are working with partners, because we all need to band together.
Fallon: I’d like to get your opinion about this. Recent Anti-Defamation League statistics showed an uptick in antisemitic incidents in the New England area – Massachusetts and Rhode Island included – with, according to them, New England a center of neo-Nazi hate groups. What do you think that is?
Joering: I think it’s all over. I think it’s absolutely all over. I think that – not getting political at all, but when leaders, whether they’re in entertainment, whether they’re in politics, whatever. When someone has a platform, and talks about hate or talks about anti semitism, bigotry, prejudice, and people hear that and then they start searching on the web, and they start looking things up. And then you put COVID into that, where people are stuck at home. I think that it was like a breeding ground for people to really come out and people, again, hearing people that have a platform, it gives people that probably or may not have said something before the courage or guts to say something – although I do not think any of them really have courage.
Fallon: How do you counter that kind of hate going almost mainstream and able to spread out into a wide population?
Joering: Through education, through education from programs like LIFT. We’re starting an adult ed class, we hold programs, we don’t charge for anything. We have, we bring in speakers, we do everything we can in our small little state that’s really doing a lot to help educate people. And sometimes people live in their own bubbles. And that’s normal, life is frenetic, people are so busy, but we really need to, to take action to help combat all forms of prejudice, like I said, and keep educating our future. We actually also started a program, a reading program with books, age-appropriate K-5, all about kindness and people that are different than you. So it gives kids a foundation if they’re not learning it already at home or somewhere, just about people that are different.
Fallon: Wendy Joering is the executive director of the Sandra Bornstein Holocaust Education Center. Thanks for joining us.
Joering: Thank you very much for having me.
Fallon: I’m Dave Fallon. This is The Public’s Radio.
