Holocaust Resource Center Continues To Grow Under New Leadership

Dr. Jeff Horn, associate professor of history and the new director of Manhattan College's Holocaust Resource Center (HRC), has a clearly defined plan for the future: to grow the “resource” component of the center.

“As director of the center, one of my goals is to focus on the ‘resource' in Holocaust Resource Center,” Horn says. “What I want to be doing is not just presenting the talks that have been popular and useful but also making sure that we have resources to share with teachers, students and the community.”

Horn, who served as associate director of the HRC since 2000 before taking on the leadership role this past September, references the word “resource” quite often while detailing his upcoming plans. A public resource room is one of his long-term goals, while an increased Internet presence also is on the horizon. In addition, the center's board of consulters was scheduled to have its first session this past February.

To address the issue of revamping the Web site, during the summer Horn will employ a graduate student, Joshua Franklin, whose main responsibility will be redeveloping the Internet page and posting an “enormous amount of materials” gathered since the center's inception in 1996. Franklin holds a master's degree in Holocaust and Genocide Studies from Clark University and is studying in Israel to become a rabbi.

“We are going to do a major update [to the Web], including putting up snippets of past speeches, a lot of the things that Fred Schweitzer has written, as well as DVDs, and make that all available online,” Horn adds.

Dr. Frederick Schweitzer, professor emeritus of history and the principal founding member of the HRC, served as director until he stepped down on March 27, 2007. At this time, he was honored when the College announced the Frederick M. Schweitzer Lecture on the Holocaust and Genocide.

The newly formed lecture series will serve as a way for the College to continue striving toward the original goals of the center, which for more than 10 years have served to educate the entire Manhattan College and Riverdale communities about the Holocaust and other genocides around the world. The first event of the lecture series is scheduled for Oct. 30, when Pulitzer Prize winner Samantha Power will visit the College.

Plans are also in the works for three more students to interview local Holocaust survivors during the spring and summer months, just like the two recent Manhattan College student-produced DVDs that tell the stories of survivors. The additional DVDs will be released later in the year.

There are some other staff changes at the HRC, too. Barbara Reynolds '72 and '80, wife of late Manhattan College chemical engineering professor Joseph Reynolds, has become assistant director and is responsible for outreach to teachers. She currently is working on organizing a seminar that will train teachers to use art in teaching the Holocaust. Professionals in areas such as film and sculpture are expected to attend.

The seminar, which is to be the center's new major program under Horn's leadership, is tentatively scheduled for the fall 2008 semester. The plan is to bring together people who work in different media to give teachers varying ways of teaching the Holocaust on different levels.

The history of the HRC dates back to 1996, when discussions among concerned faculty and administrators at the College and the Riverdale community led to the center's founding with the mission to promote Catholic-Jewish dialogue and to educate future generations about the Holocaust. The HRC inaugurated its Visiting Scholars Program the following year, and in 2006, an additional annual lecture was added to the series focusing on genocides other than the Holocaust.

In addition to its public lectures, which draw impressive crowds of students and community members, the center sponsored workshops for teachers in the metropolitan area from 1997-2002 and worked closely with the College's school of education to incorporate segments on the Holocaust into curriculum and special courses to further its mission.

In the past decade, the HRC has sponsored bus trips to the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., and New York City's Battery Park. It also has sponsored events, such as commemorations of Yom Hashoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day) and Kristallnacht (a coordinated attack on Jews throughout the German Reich on the night of Nov. 9, 1938 ) and model Passover seders on campus and in the community. In 2002, the center published Reflections of the Soul: Martin Spett's Holocaust Experiences , written by a local Holocaust survivor.