The Chronicle
See Inside Duke trounced by Notre Dame Page 6
T H E I N D E P E N D E N T D A I LY AT D U K E U N I V E R S I T Y
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 11, 2019 DUKECHRONICLE.COM
Holocaust survivor shares experience
ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTEENTH YEAR, ISSUE 24
UNWELCOME RESIDENTS
By Preetha Ramachandran A retired professor emeritus of music at Duke told the story of his family’s flight from Nazi persecution at a Thursday event at the Freeman Center. Alexander Silbiger, who is now a speaker at the Holocaust Speakers Bureau, spent his childhood in the Netherlands. His family fled after the German army invaded the country. Their path took them to France, Jamaica, Curaçao and eventually, in Silbiger’s case, to Duke. “What crime did we commit that we had to flee?” Silbiger asked the audience gathered to watch him speak in the Freeman Center. “Our crime was we were Jews.” Jews were once a valued part of the Dutch community, he said, but after the German invasion, the values of the Nazi party—including hatred of Jews—spread. Silbiger recounted memories from his childhood environment in vivid detail, including an air raid that took place on his sixth birthday, when the guests were forced to wear gas masks and hide in the basement. “If you’ve never been in an air raid, let me tell you, it’s one of the scariest things I’ve experienced, when at any moment, some bomb may fall and explode right on you,” he said. The Dutch army was no match for the German troops, he said, who were soon marching through the streets. Silbiger noted that when the German occupation began, the Jews living around him seem to have underestimated what was in store. What the Jews may not have seen was that the Germans had a four-phased plan: identify, humiliate, isolate and remove. As Silbiger described, the first phase of the plan consisted of ID cards, stamped with a large “J,” that Jewish people were forced to carry. The second and third phases featured bans from movie theaters, certain schools, restaurants and other public places. See SURVIVOR on Page 4
Selena Qian | Graphics Editor
Staff Reporter
A ‘Few’ too many fleas (and one opossum) By Matthew Griffin
affairs and dean for residential life— emphasized residents’ role in addressing Few’s wildlife problems. Residents of Few Quad have had some “Housing & Residence Life continues unwelcome guests this fall. to address the situation and appreciates An opossum began living in the ceiling of the assistance we are receiving from the the first floor of Few GG in late September, impacted community,” he wrote. “Their residents said, and the problem grew worse continued diligence in reporting problems to in October when fleas infested two first-floor us quickly is an important factor in ending bathrooms and multiple dorm rooms. The this problem.” opossum remains at large, and one of the bathrooms was closed as of Sunday evening for Opossum by night another round of flea treatment. Senior Grace Smith and her roommate “I think Few is cursed,” said junior Valeria first heard an animal in the air vent above Silombria, one of the Few GG residents over their dorm Sept. 24, Smith said, though they whose room the opossum roamed. “I don’t originally thought it was a rat. Silombria and her understand.” roommate started hearing sounds around the In an email to The Chronicle, Joe same time, and both roommate pairs submitted Gonzalez—assistant vice president of student a work order to Housing and Residence Life. University News Editor
See FLEAS on Page 3
DukeEngage introduces new programs for 2020 By Anna Zolotor Staff Reporter
Rebecca Schneid | Associate Photo Editor Alexander Silbiger presented stories from his own experience when discussing the Holocaust.
Workers tried several strategies to capture the animal, first putting tape in the ceiling space above the closets in the two rooms, Silombria and Smith said, but to no avail. On Oct. 3, Smith’s roommate lifted a ceiling tile and came face to face with the culprit—not a rat, but an opossum. She invited Silombria to come see. “She lifts her ceiling, and there’s literally an opossum right there,” Silombria said. “The opossum looked really scared.” Workers came with the mission of “checking for wildlife in ceiling,” according to student room entry notices dated Oct. 4 and 8 that were obtained by The Chronicle. However, Smith wrote in an email that it took
Looking forward to summer 2020 already, DukeEngage has unveiled seven new project sites—one domestic and the remaining international—while several sites have been eliminated for the coming year. Students have mixed reviews of their DukeEngage programs, but Suzanne Shanahan, Nannerl O. Keohane director of the Kenan Institute for Ethics, says most changes for 2020 were not made in response to student feedback. Earlier this year, DukeEngage became a program at the Kenan Institute for Ethics after the inaugural director of DukeEngage, Eric Mlyn, stepped down. DukeEngage has added—and eliminated—a handful of new destinations to its program offerings for 2020, and it has debuted Duke(Re) Engage: a research funding opportunity for DukeEngage alumni. New program offerings include the Bahamas, Bolivia, Brazil and Paraguay, Colombia, Indonesia,
Kumasi—a city in Ghana—and the Duke Marine Lab. The programs in Seattle, Cape Verde, Kauai, Portland, Puerto Rico and one of the two programs in Uganda will not run in 2020. Several international programs—with sites in Bolivia, Chile and Lebanon— currently do not have applications open, as Duke’s Global Travel Advisory Committee has recommended that these programs be placed on the Restricted Regions list, according to the DukeEngage website. Furthermore, the Durham program, which used to work in Durham, N.C., as well as its “sister city” of Durham, England, has been modified and will now stay in Durham, N.C., for the entirety of the program. Shanahan wrote in an email to The Chronicle that “this year’s changes are pretty typical. Programs vary annually depending on program director interests and availability.” The Chronicle asked several students about their DukeEngage experiences to try to determine whether student satisfaction levels
INSIDE — The opossum could not be reached for comment | Serving the University since 1905 |
@dukechronicle @dukebasketball |
could have influenced decisions as to which programs were kept and which were altered or removed. Sophomore Alex Chao participated in the DukeEngage-Durham program this past summer. When he participated, the themes of the program were community development and outreach, economic and workforce development and social enterprise and public policy. Their work focused on communitybased economic development, and participants spent six weeks in Durham, N.C. and four weeks in Durham, England. Chao was disappointed with his internship experiences in both locations. In Durham, N.C., he worked at the Scrap Exchange, which he described as a creative reuse center that is supposed to funnel resources back into the community. “I don’t really think they had a necessary place for us; it didn’t really feel like an See PROGRAMS on Page 4 @thedukechronicle | © 2019 The Chronicle