Holocaust and Human Rights Education Center

Wishing you all a Happy Hanukkah, Merry Christmas, Happy Kwanzaa, and a holiday season filled with peace, joy, and the spirit of prosperity!

Our MemoryKeeper Story Hour series will resume Wed January 8th when Lisa Salko appears on Zoom to tell the story of 13 Jewish Drivers' Licenses. We hope you join us for this amazing journey into the past, as Lisa and her sisters and cousins traveled to Lichtenfels, Bavaria, Germany to reclaim their grandfather’s and two great uncles’ drivers’ licenses which had been confiscated by the N***s . Lisa has presented 13 Jewish Drivers' Licenses at the Museum of Jewish Heritage, the German Consulate in New York, and Yad Vashem: The World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem. Q&A to follow. To register please visit https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZ0lf-ChrzsrGtzHsW4XI2cOnCxSQ_lvobDZ #/registration

We invite you to join us this Wednesday at 7pm EST for our last HHREC MemoryKeeper Story Hours of the year, featuring an intimate and powerful true story told by Max Friedman from GenerationsForward Speakers Bureau. Max will tell the story of his parents, Polish/Jewish Holocaust survivors who met in Sweden, and survived 5 years living in ghettos, slave labor and concentration camps, and were liberated from Bergen-Belsen. Registration is require in advance, for more information visit https://hhrecny.org/inspire_events/hhrec-memory-keepers-story-hour-max-friedman/

We were so pleased about the tremendous turnout for our 9th Annual Human Rights Institute for Middle School Student Leaders we held recently at Congregation Emanu-El of Westchester in Rye! Students and teachers from 33 public and private middle schools in the Hudson Valley area attended, as our staff worked closely with teachers to facilitate breakout sessions on the themes of “Human Rights”, “What it means to respect human dignity”, and “How to Be an Upstander”, and students met to develop activities to implement in their schools. The program began with a very moving and powerful presentation by Sheila Arnold, CEO and Lead Performer of History’s Alive!, who portrayed an enslaved maidservant struggling with the way slave owners were treating her daughter in the days leading up to the American revolution. This program was developed to further our mission to lay the foundation to encourage students to become “upstanders rather than bystanders.” Participating schools included: Albert Leonard (New Rochelle); Anne Dorner MS (Ossining); Ardsley MS; Bell Middle School (Chappaqua), Benjamin Turner (Mount Vernon); Blind Brook MS; Briarcliff MS; Cross Hill Academy (Yonkers); Denzel Washington School of the Arts (Mount Vernon); Dobbs Ferry MS; Eastchester MS; Fieldstone MS (North Rockland); French American School; George Fischer MS (Carmel); German International School (White Plains); Henry H. Wells (Brewster); Highlands MS (White Plains); Hommocks MS (Mamaroneck); Isaac E. Young MS (New Rochelle); Newburgh (Heritage MS, Meadow Hill Gem, South MS and Temple Academy); North Salem MS; PEARLS MS (Yonkers); Pleasantville MS; Port Chester MS; Sacred Heart (Greenwich); Seven Bridges MS (Chappaqua); Sleepy Hollow MS (Sleepy Hollow); Somers MS; and St. Joseph’s School (Bronxville). We really appreciate the support from teachers to help us connect with their students, as we work together to help them learn about these important contemporary issues. For more info visit https://hhrecny.org/students-from-33-area-schools-attend-annual-human-rights-institute-featuring-award-winning-actor/

We are pleased to announce Joan Arnay Halperin has joined our GenerationsForward Speakers Bureau. Joan tells the story of her family’s 1,241-day journey on the road to freedom. In 2012, while doing research for her book My Sister’s Eyes: a Family Chronicle of Rescue and Loss During World War II, she learned of her family’s debt to a Holocaust rescuer in Bordeaux, France. Joan shares excerpts from the testimony her mother gave in 1989. To read her full bio, and to schedule an appearance with Joan, we invite you to visit https://hhrecny.org/generations-forward/?fl_builder&fl_builder_ui_iframe

We are very pleased to announce Sonja Geismar has joined our Holocaust Survivors Speakers Bureau. Sonja lived in a small town near the city of Karlsruhe in southwest Germany, where as a four-year-old she witnessed N***s barging into their home on Kristallnacht 1938 to destroy property. To read her bio and learn more about how she and her family escaped and eventually settled here in the U.S., and to schedule an appearance with Sonja, we invite you to visit https://hhrecny.org/sonja-maier-geismar/?fl_builder&fl_builder_ui

We hope you join HHREC and our friends from AJC Westchester/Fairfield at Iona University next Thursday for this important and timely event and to gather to celebrate the holiday. Reg at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/2024-thanksgiving-diversity-breakfast-tickets-989256030417 #

We appreciate the support from our community who turned out for our HHREC Annual Benefit! It was a very special night as twelve of our Holocaust Survivor speakers were recognized, along with second and third generation Survivors, and we enjoyed a Q& A session moderated by our Board Vice Chair Daniel P. Weinreb with author Adrianne Black and Elisha Weisel, Chairman of the Board of the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity. Thank you to our teachers, donors and government leaders for helping us to continue in our efforts to offer unique education programs in the greater Hudson Valley area and beyond!

We appreciate the support from our local leaders!

We greatly appreciate the support from our local leaders!

We invite you to join us for our annual Kristallnacht Commemoration tomorrow night at Iona University featuring world-renowned Holocaust Historian Dr. Michael Berenbaum. Registration is not required. For more information visit https://hhrecny.org/inspire_events/kristallnacht-commemoration-how-holocaust-education-must-change-because-our-world-has-changed/

We invite you to join us this coming Monday November 4th as our HHREC GenerationsForward speaker Lisa Salko will share her story of her fateful trip with her sisters and cousins to Lichtenfels, Germany to recover their grandfather’s and two great uncles’ drivers’ licenses, which had been confiscated by the N***s 80 years earlier and rediscovered in 2017. What started as a trip about reclaiming a part of their family helped them come to terms with its darkest past and chart a new path forward. To reg visit https://operations.daxko.com/Online/5133/ProgramsV2/OfferingDetails.mvc?program_id=TMP50193&offering_id=SES1312081&location_id=S1520

As we prepare for our most important fundraiser of the year, we hope you will join us for our HHREC Annual Benefit next Wednesday evening 10/30 and continue to support the many unique programs we offer that educate and inform our community. Consider - in the past academic year:

• Members of our Speakers Bureau were invited to share their experiences and lessons learned about the Holocaust with over 20,000 students.

• Over 1,000 people from around the world attended our MemoryKeeper Story Hour on Zoom featuring our GenerationsForward Speakers.
• Our library has grown to include over 4,400 volumes of curated books about the Holocaust and human rights.
• Students from 64 area schools attended our annual Human Rights Institutes featuring speakers and interactive workshops promoting youth leadership in confronting prejudice and discrimination.

100% of our funds raised come from grants and individual donors like you!

To reserve your place visit us https://hhrecny.org/inspire_events/holocaust-human-rights-education-center-annual-benefit/

Shanah tovah!

Fall is in the air, and the excitement is building as we look forward to gathering with our special community on Wednesday evening October 30th for our HHREC Annual Benefit! We invite you to join us at the beautiful Westchester Country Club as we honor R. Derek Black, author of the book, THE KLANSMAN’S SON: MY JOURNEY FROM WHITE NATIONALISM TO ANTIRACISM, and Elisha Wiesel, Philanthropist, Chairman of the Board of The Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity and former Wall Street executive at Goldman Sachs. For more information and to reserve your place for this very special event please visit https://hhrecny.app.neoncrm.com/np/clients/hhrecny/event.jsp?event=1409&

We are excited to announce our HHREC International Educational Study Tour to Germany and Poland will be offered from June 20th-July 6th 2025, a guided tour to be hosted by our Director of Education Steve Goldberg, and professional tour guide Gerrit Book. This past summer educators from the U.S. joined us for a16 day tour of historical sites in Germany and Poland, including teachers from Archbishop Stepinac HS, Roosevelt HS (Yonkers), New Rochelle HS, White Plains HS, Mount Vernon HS, Denzel Washington HS, the School for the Visual & Performing Arts (Mount Vernon) and others from Florida, Ohio, New Jersey and South Carolina.

We invite you to read a testimonial on our tour by Reverend Jim O’Hanlon, a Westchester clergyman from Rye Brook at https://www.mnys.org/from-pastors-desk/holocaust-educators-trip-my-european-trip-with-the-holocaust-and-human-rights-education-center/ and you can make your plans now by visiting https://hhrecny.org/educators-study-tours/

We are very pleased to announce Leah Sills has been elected to our Board of Directors, and Caryn Stafford has joined our Advisory Board. Please join us in welcoming these two highly accomplished and distinguished leaders who will help guide us into the future! To read the full story on their appointments and experience we invite you to read about it on our News page at https://hhrecny.org/holocaust-human-rights-education-center-appoints-new-board-members-2/