University to commemorate Holocaust Memorial Day
Published Wednesday 26th January 2011
Staff and students from The University of Northampton will come together this Thursday 27 January to commemorate Holocaust Memorial Day.
Readings will take place at 12.30pm by the Anne Frank/Stephen Lawrence tree, Park Campus, from the University's Pro Vice Chancellor Professor Peter Bush, Father Andrew Behrens and Noureddine Miladi of the University's Multi-Faith Chaplaincy, Students' Union President Emily Dean, and Ron Mendel from the University & College Union. The event is open to all and members of the public are welcome to attend.
There will also be a screening of the proclaimed film The Imam and the Pastor from 2 - 3pm in the Student Centre (Room 108), Park Campus, followed by a discussion led by members of the Multi-Faith Chaplaincy team.
The Nazi Holocaust in the 1940s may seem a long time ago but it demonstrates our capacity to do incredible harm to fellow human beings - particularly if they are from ethnic, racial or religious minorities.
Commemorating the Holocaust is not simply about looking at it as a terrible historical event- although this is very important - but it is about learning the lessons of history for today, and the future, so that such events can never happen again.
Paul Crofts, Equality & Diversity Advisor, The University of Northampton
The University of Northampton's History Division, School of Social Sciences, will additionally be putting on their programme of events which all are welcome to attend.
At 10am in C101, Park Campus, Dr. Zoe Waxman, member of the Holocaust Research Centre, Royal Holloway, University of London and author of Writing the Holocaust, will deliver a key-note lecture entitled Words of Pain: Interpreting Personal Memories of the Holocaust.
Dr. Waxman's lecture will be followed by parallel seminars with guest speakers Anton Shekhovtsov on Soviet Czech cinema; Melvyn Conroy on Euthanasia and Genocide; Chris Webb on Oskar Schindler and Marcus Roberts on the Alderney Concentration Camps.
Holocaust Memorial Day provides an important and valuable communal moment for us to remember the Jewish Catastrophe, reflect on the broader atrocity crimes committed by the Third Reich, as well as alerting us to the wider perpetration of genocides both before and since 1945 in countries such as Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Darfur.
Larissa Allwork, Lecturer in History, School of Social Sciences, The University of Northampton
Spaces on seminars are limited, so if you wish to reserve a place, please contact: daniel.jones08@my.northampton.ac.uk or thomas.malby08@my.northampton.ac.uk
Alternatively, you can sign-up for a seminar on the day, by registering between 9.30 - 10am in the Library Foyer, Park Campus.