Queens Chronicle, NY
Feb 14 2008
Promising Future For QCC Holocaust Center
by Dan Tress, Reporter
02/14/2008
Queensborough Community College, in Bayside, has big plans for its
Holocaust center, both immediate and long term.
The Harriet and Kenneth Kupferberg Holocaust Resource Center and
Archives, led by director Arthur Flug, has a series of programs
planned for the spring, including film screenings, guest speakers and
a new exhibit.
`Defying the Devil: Christian Clergy Who Saved Jews During the
Holocaust’ is set to open Feb. 26 in the center’s current space, in
the basement of the college’s library.
By the end of 2009, the center, which was opened in 1983, should
be housed in a new facility, attached to the school’s administration
building. The new center will be able to have more permanent and
interactive exhibits, including displays which tell the stories of
Holocaust survivors living in Queens.
The center’s current exhibit is `Ships to Nowhere,’ which tells
the story of thousands of Jewish refugees from Europe that sailed all
around the world during World War II looking for a country to take
them in. Most countries, including the United States, rejected them,
forcing them to return to Europe, where many were killed in the
Holocaust.
A photographic history of the Holocaust, organized and designed by
a group of volunteer survivors, is on permanent display. Beginning
with pictures of European Jewish life before World War II, the
exhibit ends with pictures of liberated prisoners.
It is a product of one of the center’s goals, which is to not just
teach people about what happened in the Holocaust, but to really
emphasize all that was lost, Flug said.
`It’s more a responsibility than a job or career,’ he said.
`You’re working with people and students from the most diverse county
in the world and you have to give the Holocaust meaning.’
As part of its mission to connect many different types of people
to the Holocaust, the center has had past exhibits and presentations
focused on other genocides, such as the current situation in Darfur
and the murder of over one million Armenians in Turkey during World
War I.
In 2006, the center had an exhibit called `The Nanjing Massacre:
Genocide and Denial,’ about the Japanese massacre of hundreds of
thousands of Chinese during the 1930s.
Among the center’s other upcoming programs is the Eva Bobrow
Memorial Lecture Series. The first lecture of the season will be
`Blood to Remember: American Poets on the Holocaust’ featuring
Charles Ades Fishman, poet and editor of the New Works Review, on
March 9.
On May 18, Rabbi Manes Kogan will speak on `Where was God During
the Holocaust,’ and June 22 `Jasenovac and the Forgotten Holocaust of
Yugoslavia’ will be the talk by Barry Lituchy, an expert on the
subject.
The film `The Dybbuk,’ meaning haunting spirit, will be shown
March 23, as part of the Yiddish Film Program.
Each year Flug selects six students to take part in his Holocaust
Internship Program, as part of an effort to continue the legacy of
the Holocaust. As part of the internship, each student interviews a
survivor. Flug has found that often the students have trouble
relating to the survivor’s stories at first because of the
generational, and sometimes cultural, gap.
Learning about similar instances in other places in history, and
realizing that the survivors were about the students’ age during the
Holocaust, makes the students appreciate the stories much more, Flug
said.
`The Holocaust has an ongoing legacy, for the whole world,’ he
said.
Flug and his staff of volunteer survivors travel and give
presentations at schools and community centers throughout the area.
Flug himself does about 30 presentations each year.
For more information call the center at (718) 281-5770.