1000 x 90

ASU’s Center for Judaic, Holocaust, and Peace Studies to Host Events on April 20 and April 24

Combating Antisemitism in the Western World

Thursday, April 20
5 – 7 p.m.
Plemmons Student Union’s 416 Rough Ridge, Room 415 

Organized by the Peace and Genocide Education Club, a panel of ASU students and faculty affiliated with the Center for Judaic, Holocaust, and Peace Studies will discuss anti-Semitism in its past and present forms. The panel will take place on Thursday, April 20, from 5:00 until 7:00 p.m. at PSU’s 416 Rough Ridge, Room 415. The event is open to the public and no tickets are required.

Yom HaShoah 2017/5777: ASU and Boone Communities Remember and Read Names of Murdered European Jews

Monday, April 24
10am – 6pm
Between ASU’s Belk Library and the University Bookstore

On Monday, April 24, Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Memorial Day), the Center for Judaic Holocaust, and Peace Studies along with the Temple of the High Country and ASU’s Hillel chapter will organize a public reading of the names of European Jews murdered by the Germans and their allies during the Holocaust. This reading is scheduled to take place from 10:00 am until 6:00 pm in the outside square between ASU’s Belk Library and the University’s Bookstore in Plemmons Student Union (end of College Street).

After the readings, participants and other campus and community members will walk in silence to the Temple of the High Country (1043 West King Street), where a ceremony that encompasses the lighting of candles and the saying of the mourner’s Kaddish will conclude the day’s events, starting at 6:30 pm. ASU students, staff, faculty, members of the Temple and the Boone community at large are invited to sign up for one of the ten-minute reading slots ahead of time and participate. We hope that many members of the ASU and Boone communities will participate, linger and contemplate for as long as they like, and join us on the silent march and the ceremony at the Temple led by Hillel President Marisa Fernandez, Skip Rackmill and other members of the Temple.

The United States Congress established the Days of Remembrance as our nation’s annual commemoration of the Holocaust. This genocide was the state-directed, systematic destruction of six million European Jews and millions of others, ranging from homosexuals and Soviet POWs to Roma and people with real and imagined disabilities by the Germans and their collaborators between 1933 and 1945.

Since 1982, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, created by Congress as a permanent living memorial to this genocide’s victims, has organized and led the national Days of Remembrance ceremony in the US Capitol Rotunda. Year after year, the museum staff marks this event together with Holocaust survivors, liberators, members of Congress, White House officials, the diplomatic corps, and community leaders.

The recalling of the names of the deceased and murdered is not only an important part of Jewish religious practices. It also serves as a practice for individuals of all backgrounds, faiths, and cultures to commemorate the victims. Much more than a devastating part of Jewish history, the Holocaust is truly an event in global history. The Holocaust’s crimes of unimaginable cruelty offer opportunities to recommit to the need for respect for all people and to reflect on the moral responsibilities of individuals and communities today.

To sign up for a reading spot, please follow this link and add your name to the calendar.

For more information on the public readings, please contact the Center at 828.262.2311 or email holocaust@appstate.edu. For the ceremony at the Temple, please email templeofthehighcountry@gmail.com or Hillel President Marisa Fernandez at fernandezme@appstate.edu.