Media Coverage

UMass, Holocaust Center Weigh Partnership

By Nick Grabbe
Staff Writer, Daily Hampshire Gazette

Published on March 20, 2009

A Holocaust education center in Springfield is considering a move to the University of Massachusetts campus so it can reach more people with lessons about genocide, oppression and social justice.

UMass professors working on the partnership envision an interdisciplinary Holocaust center that would involve academic programs such as classes, internships, workshops and public school curricula. They use as a model the Center for Renaissance Studies on East Pleasant Street.

Academic interest in the Holocaust is booming, said James Young, a professor of Judaic studies. There are 180 students in his course on Holocaust literature and some who are interested are turned away, he said.

"We want to know how we got to where we are, and that means retracing our path," he said. "We need to understand contemporary genocide in the context of past genocide."

On March 24, there will be an opening reception at UMass for an exhibit that will serve as a public introduction of the new partnership. "A Reason to Remember" includes photos and personal testimonies about five Jewish families in a rural village in Germany from 1933 to 1942. It will be exhibited at the Herter Gallery through April 9. The reception is planned at the Fine Arts Center from 4 to 6 p.m.

Debbie Roth-Howe of Amherst and her father, who escaped from the village and came to the U.S. in 1938, put together the exhibit. It was first shown at the Hatikvah ("hope" in Hebrew) Holocaust Education Center in Springfield in 2004. A traveling version of the exhibit has been all over the country since then.

Seeds of partnership

The idea for a partnership between UMass and the center came from Lara Curtis of Longmeadow. She is vice chair of the center's board and a graduate student in comparative literature at UMass.

"I felt we could reach more people in a more dynamic setting," she said. "There is a continuing issue with genocide, and we tend to use the Holocaust as a model to think about the past and how we can deal with these issues today."

The center, which started in 1997, is already going beyond hosting an exhibit. It started developing curricula on the Holocaust for secondary schools in 2006 and is working with the UMass School of Education and the state Board of Education on a program of instruction for teachers.

A draft agreement between the center and UMass foresees its relocation to the Amherst campus to pursue "teaching, research, outreach and community service involving students and the general public." It seeks the development of master's and doctoral programs in Holocaust and Genocide Studies and expansion of its library, which now has 3,500 volumes and 350 audiovisual materials.

The definition of the Holocaust is expanding to include not only Jews but also Poles, gypsies, homosexuals, the disabled and other marginalized groups, Young said. President Clinton invoked the Holocaust in seeking to prevent a genocide in Kosovo in the 1990s, he said.

"The further we get away from the events of the Holocaust, the more interest there is in how these get passed down to us," Young said. "The survivors' generation was ambivalent about what to do with the memories. Once you're a generation or two removed, you have a more comfortable distance that allows people to think it through."

Hitler studied the Armenian genocide of 1915-17 and people today should study the Holocaust to prevent a recurrence, he said. Donald Maddox, a UMass professor of French and Italian who has also been involved in planning for the partnership, cited the genocide in Darfur.

"This is something that needs to be brought before our students again and again because of the tremendous atrocities we have today," he said.

The partnership is consistent with the UMass goal of reaching out to Springfield, Young said. Some part of the Hatikvah Holocaust Center would probably remain in Springfield, but exactly what has not been determined.

There will need to be significant fundraising if the new center is to have a home on or near campus. This effort came to a halt when the economy collapsed last fall, Young said.

His dream is the donation of a house close to the campus. The Renaissance Center is housed on the estate that the late Janet Dakin donated to UMass.

To buy an existing house, renovate it and establish an endowment would require several million dollars, Young said. To start from scratch would require a prohibitively high cost of $5 million to $6 million, he said.

But the group has met with Tom Milligan, the executive vice chancellor for university relations, and Chancellor Robert Holub is expected to attend the March 24 reception.

And they believe they are promoting a powerful concept: that the study of the Holocaust has profound relevance for everyday lives.

"What can we learn? We can learn more about ourselves than past events," Young said. "What does it mean to watch without acting? How innocent are bystanders?"