Although Manhattan College’s 10-year-old Holocaust Resource Center was supposed to have closed with its final public lecture in late March, community pressure has apparently postponed that fate.

The reprieve comes as a welcome possibility to members of the larger Riverdale Jewish community, as well as to Manhattan College students who’ve taken advantage of the center’s programs and events.

“Manhattan College has a long-standing and a good relationship with the Jewish community,” said Ari Hoffnung, co-president of the Riverdale Jewish Community Council, who has been writing letters to the press as well as to the college’s administration about the center. “They’re a good neighbor and a good friend. I’m confident we can resolve this issue. I’ll offer any organizational help, or anything the Jewish community can do.”

The possible closing was unrelated to funding, but rather to staffing, with the retirement of founder and director Dr. Frederick Schweitzer and the sabbatical next year of Dr. Jeff Horn, associate director of the center.

While precise details have yet to be determined or confirmed, an e-mail message from Schweitzer, emeritus professor of history at the college, indicated that the college administration was actively pursuing the hiring of a new leader for the center.

Besides presenting lectures, the center also sponsors workshops for teachers, runs model seders, takes student groups to Holocaust sites and museums, hosts exhibits, and observes memorial anniversaries, such as Yom HaShoah. The center also provides a speakers’ bureau of survivors to speak with students.

The center, which initially had been developed as part of a response to promoting Catholic-Jewish dialogue, is something of an anomaly for its presence on a staunchly Catholic college campus.

In yet another curious twist, there probably aren’t too many Holocaust Center directors who have Nazi party members among their relatives, as Schweitzer did. (He was raised by a widowed mother who left her large family in her native Stuttgart in 1934 to move to America.)

And the mere fact of having a Holocaust center at a Catholic college made its continued existence all the more imperative, said some community supporters. “It’s important that Holocaust issues be taught in non-Jewish institutions, that the story be told in all segments of society,” said Hoffnung, the grandson of survivors. “Manhattan College is an outstanding example.

They offer courses to students, they offer lectures, they take students to the Holocaust Museum in Washington and the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York, they tap people in the community to have dialogues with students. We need to make sure this work continues.”

As Schweitzer noted, “Jews don’t need an education in the Holocaust. They’re experts by dint of experience. It is gentiles who need the education. Initially, there was some resistance to the idea of the Holocaust Center, but it gained acceptance. We’ve had success in drawing from the neighborhood, with 300 to 400 people for some events.”

For student Elizabeth Harris, the center’s influence on her academic development has been incalculable. A product of Catholic schools, Harris had never heard a survivor speak before she took Horn’s course on the Holocaust and genocide.

“It totally blew my mind,” said Harris. In fact, Harris went on to receive a scholarship from the center to record interviews with Holocaust survivor Gisela Glaser, an experience with lasting resonance for Harris. “We really got to know one another,” said Harris, who spent about 20 hours with Glaser.

“I got to hear her full story and I learned a lot about her life before, after and during her time in the concentration camps. We’d stop and have lunch and we developed a great relationship. I wouldn’t have known about any of this without the center. It’s a big part of what I’ve done at Manhattan College.”

Which is why the center matters, said those closely connected to it. “We’re very interested in trying to make sure the legacy of the current generation of survivors continues,” Horn said, “with people committed to make a better world. If students weren’t part of it, we wouldn’t
do it.” WJC