Rethinking the Summer Symposium in Times of a Pandemic
Online Center Summer program with Holocaust educator and survivor Dr. Miriam Klein Kassenoff, who was originally scheduled to speak at he postponed 2020 symposium at Appalachian State.
Since 2002, the Martin and Doris Rosen Summer Symposia on Remembering the Holocaust have brought together secondary school teachers to familiarize them with the most current research on the Holocaust and anti-Semitism and provide them with successful teaching strategies that they can take to their classrooms during the school year. The program that started out with local schoolteachers has now grown into an international undertaking with participants from all across the US, Europe, and Israel. In 2020, the pandemic necessitated the first cancellation of the annual event in its nineteen-year history. The Center’s priority has always been to keep everyone safe. After all, many of the speakers and community audience members belong to COVID-19 high-risk groups. Thus, we will build on our successful ZOOM-based programming in the Fall 2020 semester and also move the 2021 symposium online.
In fact, this necessary shift in “venues” offers exciting new opportunities. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Belfer Educators Conference in July 2020 went virtual and increased its enrollment by 50 percent to more than 600 teachers. Dr. Miriam Klein Kassenoff, who played a pivotal role in starting the Martin and Doris Rosen Summer Symposia, reported a similar trend for the virtual version of the University of Miami Holocaust Teacher Institute, which she has led for many years. Yet, the advantages of shifting to an online format are hardly limited to potentials of a greater reach. Appalachian State’s Center, which has long strengthened its online presence and introduced collections of testimonies and scholarly presentations, will also be able to provide participants with an array of electronic resources both during and after the program. For the 2021 symposium on children in the Holocaust, the Center will work closely with its national and international partners, including the International School for Holocaust Studies at Yad Vashem, Israel. Several prominent Holocaust scholars and educators such as Debórah Dwork, the inaugural Rose Professor of Holocaust History and Founding Director of the Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Clark University, will be among the keynote speakers. At the same time, break-out rooms and discussions offer teachers the chance to hone in on pedagogy and teaching skills in small-group settings. We are also working with an array of child survivors of the Shoah who will give testimony about the struggles and suffering that the youngest members of the Jewish communities had to endure. These struggles ranged from escaping on a Kindertransport to persevering in hiding in Nazi-controlled Europe. In fact, Dr. Klein Kassenoff’s testimony of her early 1940 escape to Portugal and, eventually, the U.S. in her July 2020 ZOOM program with the Center demonstrated the great potentials of this format and prompted discussions of key questions in Holocaust education that continued long after everyone had logged out.
In fact, this necessary shift in “venues” offers exciting new opportunities. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Belfer Educators Conference in July 2020 went virtual and increased its enrollment by 50 percent to more than 600 teachers. Dr. Miriam Klein Kassenoff, who played a pivotal role in starting the Martin and Doris Rosen Summer Symposia, reported a similar trend for the virtual version of the University of Miami Holocaust Teacher Institute, which she has led for many years. Yet, the advantages of shifting to an online format are hardly limited to potentials of a greater reach. Appalachian State’s Center, which has long strengthened its online presence and introduced collections of testimonies and scholarly presentations, will also be able to provide participants with an array of electronic resources both during and after the program. For the 2021 symposium on children in the Holocaust, the Center will work closely with its national and international partners, including the International School for Holocaust Studies at Yad Vashem, Israel. Several prominent Holocaust scholars and educators such as Debórah Dwork, the inaugural Rose Professor of Holocaust History and Founding Director of the Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Clark University, will be among the keynote speakers. At the same time, break-out rooms and discussions offer teachers the chance to hone in on pedagogy and teaching skills in small-group settings. We are also working with an array of child survivors of the Shoah who will give testimony about the struggles and suffering that the youngest members of the Jewish communities had to endure. These struggles ranged from escaping on a Kindertransport to persevering in hiding in Nazi-controlled Europe. In fact, Dr. Klein Kassenoff’s testimony of her early 1940 escape to Portugal and, eventually, the U.S. in her July 2020 ZOOM program with the Center demonstrated the great potentials of this format and prompted discussions of key questions in Holocaust education that continued long after everyone had logged out.