Encountering Survivors Exhibit

August 11 and 12
First United Methodist Church
23 Willow Street
Mystic, CT

Encountering Survivors Exhibit

This exhibit located in the community room at the First United Methodist Church will be on display. It is timely and can illuminate the contemporary focus on survivors of tragedies in our daily news. Encountering Survivors focuses on the understandings of each holocaust survivor, and how he or she learned to take their experience and live a vibrant and productive life. Students from 7 area schools interviewed survivors. Seeing and hearing eyewitnesses made history come alive. Come see their work and reflect on their understandings.

Encountering Survivors program 2011-12 sponsored by the Rose and Sigmund Strochlitz Holocaust Resource Center of the Jewish Federation of Eastern CT

In order to draw lessons from the unique horror of the Nazi genocide, the Holocaust Resource Center used a grant from the Bodenwein Foundation for a program entitled “Encountering Survivors.”  This is our fourth year working with local high schools and this year, a middle school.  This year’s Encountering Survivor program includes seven schools that are represented by the following teachers and their students:   David Williams (Bacon Academy); Pam Neidig (Fitch Senior High School); Marceline Macrino (Ledyard High School); Joel Farrior (Leonard J. Tyl Middle School, Montville); Chris Marot and Bridget Joyce (New London High School); Henry Laudone (Norwich Free Academy); and Lynn Frazier (Windham High School).  Through the “Encountering Survivor” program, students interact with survivors/children of survivors individually through a socialization and interview process in the interviewee’s home.  This year’s participants included Henny Simon, Rae Gawendo, Lola Fox, Oleg Elperin, Edie Kil-Freeman, Dr. Stephen Powell, and Romana Strochlitz Primus.   During these intimate meetings, the students learned of the survivor’s childhood, war time experiences, and liberation.  The students also begin to comprehend the survivors’ attitudes and feelings toward these events, and ultimately gain an understanding of precisely what the survivor experienced.  Seeing and hearing an eyewitness to the Shoah makes the history come alive.  These students are now able to represent the survivors and tell their stories with accuracy and feeling to any audience for at least another 50 years.  In a way, the lives of the survivors have become immortalized. 

Students also attended a talk given by Mr. Ben Cooper, a WWII veteran and liberator of Dachau.   For a concluding project, students wrote articles documenting the life of each survivor and these articles were presented in newspaper format at our final meeting held at Ledyard High School.     These posters represent their hard work.