"Holocaust & Genocide Awareness Month highlights the integral principles of the Holocaust Resource Center: education and respect. The month allows the community to remember all the lives lost to mass genocide across the world with a focus on educating communities against the accumulation of hatred and violence, allowing the newer generations to learn about the mistakes of past while mourning victims and respecting their families. It is a month to ensure that this said hatred and violence does not amass into catastrophic events of death once again."— Holocaust Resource Center Kean University
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"The world has witnessed nearly a century of genocides that all began in April. Millions of people perished; cultures were destroyed; communities and nations were ruined.
It was in April 1915 that the Ottoman government began rounding up and murdering leading Armenian politicians, businessmen and intellectuals, a step that led to the extermination of more than a million Armenians.
In April 1933, the Nazis issued a decree paving the way for the "final solution," the annihilation of 6 million Jews of Europe.
In April 1975, the Khmer Rouge entered Cambodia's capital city and launched a four-year wave of violence, killing 2 million people.
In April 1992, the siege of Sarajevo began in Bosnia. It was the longest siege in modern history, and more than 10,000 people perished, including 1,500 children.
In April 1994, the plane carrying the president of Rwanda crashed and triggered the beginning of a genocide that killed more than 800,000 people in 100 days.
In April 2003, innocent civilians in Sudan's Darfur region were attacked; 400,000 have been killed and 2.5 million displaced in a genocide that continues today." -Ellen J. Kennedy.
To register for an event, email Adara Goldberg, Resource Center Director
Kean University's Holocaust Resource Center Recommended Reading
- Joanna Sliwa, Jewish Childhood in Kraków: A Microhistory of the Holocaust (2021, Kean alumna) - She is giving a book talk on April 20
- Kizito D. Kalima, My Forgiveness, My Justice: Overcoming the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda (2021) - I have photos of his visit here if interested
- Maud Dahme, Chocolate, the Taste of Freedom: The Holocaust Memoir of a Hidden Dutch Child (2015)
- Lerna Ekmekcioglu, Recovering Armenia, The Limits of Belonging in Post-Genocide Turkey (2016)
- Alexander Hinton, Why Did They Kill?: Cambodia in the Shadow of Genocide (2004)
- Adara Goldberg, Holocaust Survivors in Canada: Exclusion, Inclusion, Transformation, 1947-1955 (2015)
- Dennis B. Klein, Survivor Transitional Narratives of Nazi-Era Destruction: The Second Liberation (A Modern History of Politics and Violence) (2019)
- Joseph Preil, Holocaust Testimonies: European Survivors and American Liberators in New Jersey (2001) - Founding director of the HRC
- Sam Halpern, Darkness and Hope (2019) - Founding member of HRC/HRF
- Clara Kramer, Clara's War: One Girl's Story of Survival (2010) - Founding member of HRC/HRF
- Abraham Zuckerman, A Voice in the Chorus: Life As a Teenager in the Holocaust (1990) - Founding member of HRC/HRF