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Addressing Ethic and Civic Responsibility through the Lessons of the Holocaust

July 9-15, 2006 

KEENE, N.H. 7/13/06 - Twenty-six teachers and educators from New Hampshire, Israel, Estonia, and Massachusetts have gathered on campus this week for an institute on teaching the history of the Holocaust.

The Third Biennial Holocaust Institute, a project of the Cohen Center for Holocaust Studies, is designed to engage teachers in an intense, interdisciplinary study of the Holocaust. For the third year the New Hampshire Humanities Council has funded the institute - a testament to the compelling need for educators to deal thoughtfully and accurately with one of history’s most difficult events.

Two rabbis and seven Keene State College faculty members in history, philosophy, film, literature, sociology, and psychology provide information, contexts, and perspectives that will enrich the study of the Holocaust and talk about how teachers can be more accurate and effective when teaching the Holocaust at the secondary level.

Opening the institute on July 9 was keynote speaker Sibylle Sarah Niemoeller von Sell, the widow of Pastor Martin Niemoeller. Adolf Hitler incarcerated Niemoeller in 1937, and declared him his personal and private prisoner (he survived one year in prison and seven years in the concentration camps of Sachsenhausen and Dachau).

Today Niemoeller may be best known for this statement: “First they came for the Communists, but I was not a Communist so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Socialists and the Trade Unionists, but I was neither, so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew, so I did not speak out. And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me.”

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