Miamians remember Holocaust victims with daylong readings of names

Miami University will honor those who died during the Holocaust by reading names for Holocaust Remembrance Day, or Yom Hashoah, Monday April 24.

Readings of names and ages of 5,000 children who died during the Holocaust will be held 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday, April 24, at the Hub on Oxford’s campus. Readers will read in 15-minute increments. Those interested should contact Natalie Roberts, planning committee member, at robertnm@miamioh.edu.

Miami University Regionals will also host name readings at noon on Monday, April 24. Readings will take place at Schwarm Commons on the Hamilton campus and Johnston Hall on the Middletown campus, as well as at the Greentree Health Science Academy and Miami’s Voice of America Learning Center. Reading of victims' names will also be done at Miami's Luxembourg campus.

The Middletown campus is dedicating their reading in honor and memory of Elizabeth Krukowski, a former Middletown English department faculty member whose family was trapped in the ghetto at Lodz, Poland, and escaped via Russia, Japan and Canada before arriving in the United States.

During the month of April, Miami’s annual Genocide and Holocaust Education Program, “Seeking Safety: Barriers, Borders and Benevolence,” schedules lectures, films, student panels and other learning opportunities that examine how genocides happen: the ways in which the gradual process of societal marginalization has preceded instances of genocides in the past and present, and the ways in which one cultural group can come to see another as fundamentally different and ‘other.’

The program provides opportunities for students to reflect on their own ability to effect change in current human rights crises and to network with similarly engaged students.

Additional program events:

Genocide and Holocaust Education Read-In, 7 p.m., Wednesday, April 26, Miami University Bookstore, Shriver Center

Faculty and students share their own writing about genocide, the Holocaust and the condition of being a refugee.

“Prosecuting the Khmer Rouge: The Stakes of Cambodian American Memory Work” – Lecture and Discussion, 5:30 p.m., Thursday, April 27, 212 MacMillan Hall (Great Room)

Seleshi Ayalew Asfaw, executive director of Ethiopian Tewahedo Social Services, will present on refugees from the Horn of Africa in America today.

The Genocide and Holocaust Education Program is sponsored by the Center for American and World Cultures and the department of history’s Holocaust Education Fund, with support from the university honors, film studies, Asian and Asian American studies and Jewish studies programs; Ford Family Initiative on Spiritual Meaning and Purpose; Hillel Foundation of Miami University; departments of English, political science, and Spanish and Portuguese; Interfaith Center; and Center for Holocaust and Humanity Education.