Drew University's Center for Holocaust and Genocide Study Celebrates Heroism

By Yasmin Acosta

Individual acts of heroism in Poland are the focus of two upcoming events from the Center for Holocaust/Genocide Study at Drew University.

In one case, Francisca Halamajowa successfully hid 16 Jewish neighbors in her home on the eve of World War II, partly by pretending to be a Nazi sympathizer. In the other, Helena Skrzeszewska and two friends secreted the family of Selma Tennenbaum Rosen on their farm.

The Tennenbaum family also hid in attics, cellars and bunkers. Of the 10,000 Jews who lived in their hometown of Zlochow, Poland, only 70 survived, including six children, according to the center.

Halamajowa is the subject of the documentary, No. 4 Street of Our Lady, which the center will screen Oct. 14 at 4 p.m. Afterward, there will be a Q&A with Fran “Fay” Malkin, one of the children that Halamajowa saved. This event will take place in Room 28 of the Learning Center.

Tennenbaum Rosen is featured in the other event, a conversation on Oct. 21 at 6:30 p.m. Her family arrived in the United States when she was 10, and she went on to become an engineer and president and CEO of Hansome Energy Systems in Linden, N.J. Her talk will take place in Room 101 of Brothers College.

In between those events is the premiere of The Diary of Anne Frank at the Drew-based Shakespeare Theater of New Jersey. The play opens Oct. 17, after a preview performance on Oct. 14. Tickets are available via www.shakespearenj.org or by calling 973-408-5600, with the theatre offering a 10 percent discount for those who mention the Center for Holocaust/Genocide Study or type the code “Center” online.

The events and play opening come just weeks before the center’s annual conference, on Nov. 12. This year’s conference is titled, “From Nuremberg to The Hague: The Evolution of War Crimes Trials.”

About the Center for Holocaust/Genocide Study

Founded in 1992 through a grant from the New Jersey Commission on Holocaust Education, the Center for Holocaust/Genocide Study offers a variety of events. We schedule—as permanent anchors in our programming—an annual November conference in memory of Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass) and an annual Yom HaShoah (Day of Remembrance) commemoration. We also offer films, lectures, performances, workshops and commemorative events dealing with the Holocaust and with other genocides such as those in Armenia, Bosnia, Cambodia, Darfur and Rwanda. We enrich Drew’s undergraduate and graduate course work by bringing notable scholars and speakers to campus, by organizing visits to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and by providing additional resources that enhance the study of Holocaust and genocide. We also support faculty research. For example, we commissioned an English translation of a German text dealing with Nazi slave labor camps. All events are open to the larger community.