New York Daily News, NY
Aug 15 2004
Resource enhanced
$3M expansion for Holocaust center
By DONALD BERTRAND
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Eduardo Marti, president of Queensborough Community College, shows
off model of new Holocaust Resource Center and Archives, currently
housed in basement of library on Bayside campus.
For 20 years, the Holocaust Resource Center and Archives has been
housed in the basement of the library building at Queensborough
Community College in Bayside.
Now, thanks to a $3 million allocation in the state budget secured by
Sen. Frank Padavan (R-Bellerose), the center will be able to almost
double its size in a new location – and become a centerpiece of the
campus.
“What we are trying to do is take the Holocaust Resource Center from
the basement of the library and put it at the forefront of our
campus,” said Queensborough President Eduardo Marti.
“I am delighted that the state has approved the CUNY request to fund
the relocation and expansion.”
The $3 million will be used to renovate a portion of the
administration building that is now a mailroom and duplicating room,
along with a loading dock.
A glass-enclosed lobby will be built out from where the loading dock
is now located.
“It will be a very visible and striking facility,” said the college’s
president.
Marti, a Cuban who fled the island when he was 19, said he has had
personal experience with the evils of prejudice.
The new center, he declared, would be a “wonderful education vehicle
to teach about what unbridled prejudice can result in.”
“I believe that by bringing the Holocaust Resource Center to a
prominent location on campus, we will be able to utilize this
facility as a vivid example and laboratory where we can teach about
what can result when you have unbridled prejudice.”
Padavan said that “studying the Holocaust and other acts of genocide
around the world throughout history is vital to understanding and
preventing these types of brutalities in the future – and to stopping
them in the present.”
The senator noted that the Holocaust Center works with schools
throughout the state to develop curricula to study the Holocaust and
other acts of genocide, such as the killings in Armenia, Cambodia and
the Sudan. State education law requires curricula that include
instruction and study of the Holocaust, Padavan said.
Marti said, “We are extremely grateful to Sen. Padavan for his
leadership in championing this important project through the
legislature and to Assemblyman [Mark] Weprin (D-Bayside) and the
entire Queens delegation for supporting this request.”
The borough president’s office and Councilman David Weprin (D-Hollis)
also have provided funding, Marti said.
“For the 20 years of its existence, [the center] has been kept going
through the good offices of Dr. [William] Shulman, who is a retired
professor of our college, and a cadre of volunteers – most of them
survivors of the Holocaust,” said Marti.
The hope now, he added, is to use the enhanced prominence of the
center to be able to build an endowment so that the center can
operate in perpetuity.
“So that forever we will be able to serve the mission of educating
not only our own students but also high school students and even
elementary school students about the horrors of the Holocaust,” Marti
said.