Cohen Center Offers “Seeking Tikkun (Repair)” Workshops
From Tom White, Cohen Center:
The Cohen Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies is offering two public roundtables and professional development workshops around the theme of “Seeking Tikkun: The Role of Memory in Building Community Fostering Wholeness.” The roundtables will focus on the importance of confronting difficult history in order to bear witness to, and be willing to face our responsibilities for, the other in our midst.
The initial roundtable, “Confronting a Difficult Past: Germans Wrestle with the Legacy of Nazism and the Holocaust” will be held on Friday, October 9, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. in the Mabel Brown Room, Student Center. This event was inspired by Ursula Mahlendorf’s memoir, The Shame of Survival: Working through a Nazi Childhood. Mahlendorf was a Hitler Youth squad leader who has sought to come to terms with her past.
Joining her in the roundtable discussion will be a woman whose family was active in the German resistance; a Jewish survivor of Kristallnacht who fled Germany and would later serve in Patton’s 6th Armor Division; the son of two Holocaust survivors born in a displaced persons camp in 1946; and the son of Nazi industrialists and perpetrators whose childhood friends were the children of the commandant of Auschwitz III, Buna Monowitz.
The second roundtable, “Anguished Hope: Holocaust Scholars Confront the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict” will be held on Friday, December 11, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. in the Mountain View Room, Student Center.
Holocaust scholars will discuss what the study of the Holocaust helps us to understand, or lead us to ponder, when facing the Palestinian-Israeli conflict while being attentive to its history and complex dynamics. Four contributors to the book Anguished Hope will discuss their work on that project, and explore their continuing engagement with this demanding topic.
A pre-registration fee is required for each roundtable. For a registration form, or more information, please visit: www.keene.edu/cchs/.
