• GCD 2022

     

    For the second year, we had an all-District Genocide Commemoration Day.

     

    All day programming in person and online

    • Reading of Biographies at the start of each period
    • Dimensions in Testimony - This is an interactive experience in which you see and can interact with a hologram of a Holocaust survivor, asking questions and getting real-time responses. It is generously hosted by the IL Holocaust Museum and Education Center (created by the USC Shoah Foundation).
    • Wall of Names - These representations of victims from various genocides are displayed outside the DHS auditorium. #TogetherWeRemember
    • Holocaust Survivor Poster Series - At HPHS, there will be a traveling poster exhibit of Holocaust Survivors, provided by the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center.
    • Lest We Forget - This display was put up outside the DHS Auditorium and can be viewed on our Remember webpage. It includes profiles of victims, survivors, rescuers and upstanders with connections to District 113.
    • Indian Boarding Schools - This display was put up in the DHS front hall; we compiled many resources, some of which can be viewed on our American Indians webpage under Boarding Schools.
    • College Campus Hate - We printed and displayed these DHS alumni experiences at various places across DHS for effect.  You can view the collection on our College Campus Hate webpage.
    • Take Action Options - We provided many options for people to sign petitions to urge elected officials to take action on pending bills, both at our in-person displays and online; you can access these options under the Take Action webpage.  We also provided two sessions for students to learn upstander techniques through the ADL's Peer Influencer Training.

     

    Speakers - biographies and recordings

    Speaker Session 1 - Dr. Brenda J. Child

    Brenda J. Child is Northrop Professor of American Studies at the University of Minnesota and former chair of the Departments of American Studies and the Department of American Indian Studies. She is the author of award-winning books about American Indian history, including Boarding School Seasons: American Indian Families, 1900-1940, (1998), which won the North American Indian Prose Award; Holding Our World Together: Ojibwe Women and the Survival of Community, (2012), and a book for children, Bowwow Powwow (2018), which won the American Indian Youth Literature Award for best picture book. She served as a member of the board of trustees of the National Museum of the American Indian-Smithsonian and was President of the Native American & Indigenous Studies Association. Child was born on the Red Lake Ojibwe Reservation in northern Minnesota where she served as a member of a committee writing a new constitution for the 12,000-member nation.  (See full profile at the University of Minnesota website and this Aug 2021 article.)

     

    Speaker Session 2 - Dr. George Brent

    This session ended with a special performance of "The Ballad of Mauthausen" by DHS students Sophia Ullman and Hannah Cohen.

    George Brent was born in 1929 in Téscö, in an area of Czechoslovakia that was later turned over to Hungary. Because his father was a pharmacist, the family was able to remain outside the Téscö ghetto for much longer than other families, so that the town’s pharmacy could continue to operate. They were forced into the ghetto on May 21, 1944, and deported to Auschwitz three days later. Upon arrival, George and his father were selected for work. With help from George’s uncle, they were able to stay together and were assigned to jobs that were safer and more protected from the elements. As the Russian army advanced, George was sent on a death march and then on a coal train to Mauthausen. He was eventually liberated from Ebensee concentration camp in Austria. George came to the United States in 1947, and his father followed him soon after. Photos of George, his father, and other men from Téscö appear in The Auschwitz Album.  (See full profile at IL Holocaust Museum.)

     

    Speaker Session 3 - Steen Metz

    A 2018 speaker, he is returning to DHS this year as he tries to reach a total of 100,000 people as audience to his story over many years of speaking.

    “On October 2, 1943, my parents and I were arrested and deported to the Theresienstadt Concentration Camp from my childhood home in Odense, Denmark. I was only eight years old. This Nazi facility was the scene of constant hunger, brutal living conditions, and death. Some 15,000 children passed through Theresienstadt. I am one of fewer than 1,500 who survived.” Mr. Metz and his wife moved to the US in 1962 and raised their two daughters in Deerfield.

    (Steen Metz, Never Forget; see also his IL Holocaust Museum profile)