BY RAEGAN NEUFELD
For the second year in a row, the Hays Holocaust Remembrance Committee is hosting a number of events in April to help educate students and community members.
These events include presentations, movie screenings and book discussions. The Committee – which is made up of Fort Hays faculty members, students and employees of the Hays Public Library – is partnering with several organizations, both on and off campus to host the events. These include the FHSU History Club, American Democracy Project, College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, Forsyth Library, HPL, the Fortunoff Archive and the Greater Lafayette Holocaust Remembrance Conference.
“Last year, we did everything for free,” said Amber Nickell, chair of the Committee and an assistant professor of history. “I exchanged lectures with my friends who also work on Holocaust studies for them to come here and give lectures. So we did everything for free, on zero budget, just kind of seeing if things worked. This time, we’ve got generous financial support from the (CAHSS), which has been very helpful.”
The month’s events begin on April 11 with keynote speaker Jake Newsome, who will talk about his book, Pink Triangle Legacies: Coming Out in the Shadow of the Holocaust. Nickell said this presentation is one she is the most interested in.
“(The book) is about mostly queer men and their experiences during the Holocaust because they were part of the victimology,” she said. “I think given contemporary politics and a lot of the conversations going on today, his talk is very timely to start helping us as a community think about empathy and how we treat other people.”
Nickell also discussed a presentation scheduled for the end of the month titled “Song from Testimonies in the Fortunoff Archive.” The speaker will be the Director of the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Stephen Naron, who will talk about the songs heard in testimonies from Holocaust survivors.
“He takes songs people sang in oral histories and then another person creates music to go with them, so they bring the music of Holocaust survivors alive,” Nickell said.
The events cover several different aspects of the Holocaust, not just the genocide in Poland, which is most commonly taught. Along with Newsome’s presentation about queer men in the Holocaust, there will also be a session about the Holocaust in Romania, where attendees will hear from a survivor via Zoom
Along with support from other organizations, the Committee expanded the number of events this year simply through networking. For instance, Nickell attributed most of her connections in the Holocaust studies community to conferences she goes to and material she publishes.
“Sometimes it’s people you know in real life, people you’ve met at conferences, in publication opportunities, and sometimes it’s people you meet over Twitter or other social media platforms,” she said.
In fact, Nickell said a fellow Department of History faculty member, Hollie Marquess, reached out to one of the speakers on Twitter and made the connection that way.
At the end of the day, the Committee has the ultimate goal to raise awareness, educate and prevent.
“I think anybody who works on topics like this wants to prevent, to stop genocides from happening,” Nickell said. “They are happening today as we speak, they have happened historically after the Holocaust.”
In addition, Nickell said they hope to continue expanding each year.
“We hope to also expand over the coming years into talking about other genocides, because most Holocaust thinkers and survivors agree that the goal is to have a larger conversation.”
Informational flyers for each event can be found below:
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