Colorado State University Celebrates 15th Annual Holocaust and Genocide Awareness Week February 25 – March 4

Students for Holocaust and Genocide Awareness and Hillel present the 15th Annual Holocaust and Genocide Awareness Week at Colorado State University Feb. 25-March 4.

A Field of Flags ceremony will take place at 3 p.m. Friday, Feb. 25, on the Lory Student Center Plaza. The flags will be on display during the entire week on the plaza. The flags represent the different groups murdered during the Holocaust, with each flag representing 5,000 victims.

Additionally, a Litany of Martyrs will be held from 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Monday, Feb. 28, through Thursday, March 3, in the Lory Student Center Sunken Lounge. Volunteers will take turns reading names of some of those who died during the Holocaust. Community members are welcome to volunteer for this event and can sign up at holocaust.colostate.edu.

Survivors of the Holocaust Stories will be held at 7 p.m. Monday, Feb. 28, in the Lory Student Center Main Ballroom. Ron Sladek, historian and son and grandson of Holocaust survivors, will give an interactive presentation on the impacts of the Holocaust on his family. A discussion with the audience will follow.

A film, “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas,” will be shown at 7 p.m. Tuesday, March 1, in the Lory Student Center Theatre. The film is a fictional story that offers a unique perspective on how prejudice, hatred and violence affect innocent people, particularly children, during wartime.

The Keynote presentation by Daniel H. Magilow, “Children and the Afterlife of the Holocaust,” will take place at 7 p.m. Wednesday, March 2. Magilow is an assistant professor of German at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. His research centers on Holocaust Studies and 20th Century German culture. In 2005-2006, he was the Pearl Resnick Postdoctoral Fellow at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. He translated and edited “In Her Father’s Eyes: A Childhood Extinguished by the Holocaust” and has published several articles about Holocaust photography.

A genocide survivor will give his firsthand account of his experience in Rwanda. Joseph Sebarenzi will speak at 7 p.m. on Thursday, March 3, in the North Ballroom of the Lory Student Center. A question-and-answer session with the audience will follow.

Sebarenzi was born in Rwanda in 1963. Sebarenzi worked as a high school teacher in Rwanda; as an executive in non-government organizations in Rwanda, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of Congo; and served as Speaker of the Rwanda Parliament from 1997 to 2000. As Speaker, he was referred to by many as an independent politician bent on denouncing abuses and enhancing the independence and role of the parliament. Sebarenzi serves on the faculty of CONTACT at the School for International Training/Graduate institute and speaks about reconciliation, forgiveness and conflict management at colleges, universities and events in the United States.

The week will conclude with a memorial service at 3 p.m. Friday, March 4, in the Lory Student Center Theatre.

Holocaust Awareness Week is sponsored by Hillel, Students for Holocaust Awareness, ASCSU and ASAP. For more information and a complete list of events, contact Rabbi Allison Peiser, Hillel campus director at Colorado State University, at (970) 224-4246 or visit the Web at www.csu.hillelcolorado.org.

All events are free and open to the public through funding provided by the Associated Students of Colorado State University, Hillel of Colorado and the Association for Student Activity Programming.
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