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Showing posts from April, 2013

Shoah Survivor Shares Vision of Peace

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  I'm not always comfortable with what I have read from the blog I am linking to - but this single link shares insight I can't access since I am not fluent with Modern Hebrew.  In a speech, translated by Richard Silverstein, Warsaw Ghetto Survivor, Chavka Fulman-Raban shares her views on the need to transform our world towards tolerance and peace. From Silverstein:  "On Yom Ha-Shoah, one of the few remaining living survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto, Chavka Fulman-Raban, delivered a fierce denunciation of evil and injustice, including the Israeli Occupation.  Her speech was offered to guests at the ceremony of Beit Lohamey Ha-Getaot (the Ghetto-Fighters House)." Her words include: Rebel against racism and violence and hatred of those who are different.  Against inequality, economic gaps, poverty, greed and corruption. Strengthen humanistic education and values of ethics and justice.  These too are [a form of] rebellion against alcoholism among our youth and th

Let us all unite! Rescue! Stand up! Make Peace!

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I teach a course on antisemitism, the Holocaust (Shoah) and the history of genocide. Every class session, I tell learners the quote by Yehuda Bauer:  “Do not be a perpetrator. Do not be a bystander. Do not be a victim.” Every class session I give them the Marty Michelson version - with it's supplemental inversion! “Do not be a perpetrator. Do not be a bystander. Do not be a victim.  Be a rescuer!  Be an upstander!  Be a peacemaker!" Not being a perpetrator is important  . . . and we must also actively be peacemakers! Not being a bystander is important . . . and we must also actively stand-up for others! Not being a victim is important . . . and we must also be people who rescue victims and victimizers! I end the final hours of the course each semester with the moral courage and vision of communal life embodied in the village of LeChambon sur Lignon. presented in the book by Phillip Hallie, Lest Innocent Blood be Shed .  I show portions of a film that paralle