Holocaust center plans fall programs for children and adults

BY GIOVANNA WISEMAN

PROVIDENCE –The Sandra Bornstein Holocaust Education Center is bringing back and expanding its programs for children, teens and adults this fall.

The center is expanding its elementary reading program, “Get Up! Stand Up!” The program brings age-appropriate books about kindness and acceptance into K–5 classrooms. After reading five books, students complete a short reflection evaluating the lessons and values they learned.

The inaugural program, held in Scituate earlier this year, was a resounding success, so the center is now planning to expand Get Up! Stand Up! into public libraries across the state.

The program, while not directly related to Holocaust education, emphasizes the importance of tolerance and the beauty in diverse perspectives. You are never too young to be kind!

The center is also bringing back its Leadership Institute for Teens for a second year. LIFT’s pilot gave teens numerous opportunities to bond with one another and build leadership skills to help their communities. The group was multicultural, with students coming together across geographical, religious and racial lines.

Building a diverse group was intentional; in addition to focusing on the Holocaust, the center is committed to partnerships with all communities.

Highlights from last year’s LIFT program included a visit from the Non-Violence

Institute, a presentation by Holocaust survivor Ada Winsten and Nadia Escalante, a recent refugee from Guatemala, and the composition of a graphic novel that chronicles the life story of Ruth Oppenheim, who experienced firsthand the violence of Kristallnacht.

The teens finished the program with a community-service project, which involved collecting books about empathy and inclusion and distributing them in areas of low-literacy.

If you have a high-school student in your life, please encourage them to visit the center’s website, https:// bornsteinholocaustcenter. org, where they can apply to join LIFT. The free program will meet once or twice each month from October to April. LIFT is partially funded by the Jordan Tannenbaum and Harold Winsten Family Endowment.

The center’s long-running Speaker’s Bureau is the heart of the organization. As Holocaust survivors age, the bureau increasingly relies on their children and other family members to keep the memory of their loved ones alive by sharing their stories.

While survivor testimony is undoubtedly priceless, hearing from the second generation offers something perhaps even more valuable than history – a sense of continuity.

Second-generation speakers can share the trauma of their parents, but also their own inherited pain. They can explain that antisemitism did not end with the Holocaust, that it is in fact getting worse – this is what motivates many of them to tell their family stories.

In some ways, learning about the Holocaust through second-generation survivors is just as powerful as hearing from survivors themselves – their mere presence proclaims, “We are still here!” Still dynamic. Still alive.

The center is grateful that our local survivor community is so strong, and looks forward to continuing to work together to fight antisemitism and all forms of hate. We hope you and the young people in your life will join us in our mission.

GIOVANNA WISEMAN is the director of programming and community outreach at the Sandra Bornstein Holocaust Education Center, in Providence.

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