News Stories
Two Women with Connections to Holocaust Address Genocide
A Holocaust survivor and a student whose grandparents survived captivity in a Nazi concentration camp will speak on the impact of genocide on March 22 at the College. The panel discussion, which is free and open to the public, begins at 3:15 p.m. in the campus Life Center.
Ann Jaffe was ten years old when the Nazis occupied her Lithuanian village of Kobylnik in 1941. Less than ten percent of the Jews in Kobylnik survived the occupation. Jaffe admits that she got through the ordeal “only because of the determination of my parents and a little luck.” A resident of Wilmington, Delaware, for 32 years, she has devoted much of her free time to speaking at schools, universities and churches about her experience during the Holocaust.
At Neumann, she plans to tell students “what it’s like to experience genocide and how destructive hatred is.” Jaffe lived under the constant threat of death for three years, until her village was liberated in 1944.
Regina Moran, a sophomore from the Mayfair section of Philadelphia, is majoring in political science and secondary education at Neumann. Her mother’s parents, now deceased, spent more than two years in a concentration camp in Yugoslavia. Moran recalls her mother’s stories of a somber family life in the post-Holocaust years and admits that her own experience has been quite different.
“My mother taught me to stand up for others,” she explains, “to do charitable work, and to fight for women’s rights.”
The panel discussion is part of Darfur Awareness Week at Neumann College. To Moran, the connection between Darfur and the Holocaust is obvious. “We say, ‘Never again,’ but genocide keeps happening. We have to tie the past to the present and speak up for those who don’t have a voice.”
Darfur has been embroiled in a deadly conflict for more than three years. News agencies place the number of dead at more than 400,000 – most at the hands of militia backed by the government of Sudan in its attempt to quell rebellion from three Sudanese ethnic groups. It is thought to be the most widespread campaign of genocide since the killing in Rwanda in 1994.
In response to an invitation from Franciscans International, the College Mission and Ministry unit organized Darfur Awareness Week on campus. In addition to the panel discussion, there will be a power point presentation in the lobby of Bachmann Main Building, table tent messages in campus cafeterias, and displays in hallways and the library that will last for the entire week. Students are also sponsoring a breakfast discussion of Night, a book by Elie Wiesel on March 21 at 9 a.m. in the Assisi Room of Bachmann.
For more information about Darfur Awareness Week, call 610-361-5407.
3/9/07
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