UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- Director of Penn State’s Hammel Family Human Rights Initiative Boaz Dvir will deliver Florida Atlantic University’s Erna and Henry Rubinstein Memorial Lecture in Holocaust Studies at 5 p.m. May 4.
A virtual event, “Fulfilling Holocaust Education’s Hate-Uprooting Promise” is free and open to the public. Click here to register. Participants will receive a link.
Dvir — who also directs the Holocaust, Genocide and Human Rights Education Initiative at Penn State — will examine traditional Holocaust education’s efficacy and potential and describe the approach he and his Penn State colleagues have taken to boost its effectiveness.
After a 30-minute presentation, Dvir will take questions from attendees.
“When we met in the mid-1990s, Erna and I became instant lifelong friends,” said Dvir, an assistant professor of journalism in the Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications. “I very much look forward to discussing, in her honor, a topic that was close and dear to her heart. Erna shared her story of surviving the Holocaust with thousands of students throughout South Florida and with the rest of the world through her riveting books.”
Erna Rubinstein’s books include “The Survivor in Us All: Four Young Sisters in the Holocaust” and “After the Holocaust: The Long Road to Freedom.” She met her husband, Henry, a doctor, after War World II.
The Rubinstein Lecture is part of the Center for the Study of Values and Violence after Auschwitz at FAU, a public research university serving 30,000 students in six campuses.
Based in the Bellisario College, the Holocaust Education Initiative is part of the Hammel Family Human Rights Initiative. This multidisciplinary effort also brings together Penn State pedagogical and content experts from the College of Education, the College of the Liberal Arts, Penn State Law, the Humanities Institute, the Center for Science and the Schools, Jewish Studies, the Child Maltreatment Solutions Network, Penn State Berks and Penn State York. The initiative provides intensive professional learning to help educators teach a variety of difficult topics, including racism and trauma.