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Monmouth County Story
Holocaust Center honors student anthology winners
The Center for Holocaust Studies at Brookdale
Community College in Lincroft celebrated the publication of “Flowers from the Ashes,” an anthology of student artwork and writings on the Holocaust, at a Jan. 23 press conference that also commemorated the first international Holocaust commemoration day.
The anthology contains written pieces and artistic creations that were submitted to the center’s annual statewide Luna Kaufman Writing and Art Contest during 2003-2004. Kaufman is a Holocaust survivor who lives in Watchung; she was honored by the center at a 1993 testimonial dinner.
More than 500 students in grades five through 12 throughout the state participated in the contest; the works of 40 students were selected to appear in the anthology, according to Dale Daniels, the center’s executive director. Ten of those students read their compositions at the Jan. 23 commemoration: Daniel Wertman of Marlboro (seventh- to eighth-grade category), Angelica Parmegiani of Englishtown (seventh-eighth grade), Rebecca Handlin of Lincroft (fifth-sixth grade), Jason Rindenau of Marlboro (11th-12th grade), Meaghan Vitale of Howell (seventh-eighth grade), Bar Cudkevich of Eatontown (fifth-sixth grade), Alexandra Sarna of Middletown (seventh-eighth grade), Heather Sedlacek of Holmdel (seventh-eighth grade), Caitlin Lundy of Barnegat (seventh-eighth grade), and Elizabeth Chang Wendel of Fort Monmouth (seventh-eighth grade).
Each of the 40 students whose work appears in “Flowers from the Ashes” also received a Hy and Fanny Klein Award in the form of a $50 United States savings bond.
The prose and artwork entries in the anthology, which the center plans to distribute to every middle school and high school in Monmouth County, are valuable educational tools, said Kaufman, who was present at the event.
“Learning about the Holocaust is not just a Jewish issue,” said Kaufman, who was born in Cracow and spent four years in slave labor camps. “Genocide touches all aspects of society. Today’s younger generations must recognize this. It is clear that the young people whose work is in this book have achieved a great depth of understanding and compassion.”
And education is one of the strongest weapons against hatred, intolerance, and bigotry, added Daniels.
“It teaches us that we all have a responsibility to speak out against prejudice,” she said. “The students whose work appears in ‘Flowers from the Ashes’ have internalized these lessons and made them personal. That’s why each piece is so impassioned.”
Some of the young authors’ entries make references to “the dark cloud that hung over Europe,” and a “world turned upside down,” while others likened the sound of trains rumbling over the tracks to the heartbeats of those locked inside. Another essay recounts the story of a girl who reminds her tormentors that she is a human being with a name and family — and that she still wants to travel around the world.
“These students told us so many things and expressed so many emotions,” said center cofounder Professor Jack Needle. “That’s why the mission of the Holocaust Center will endure.”
The new International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust was mandated in a United Nations resolution adopted in November 2005, and was marked by a ceremony Jan. 27 in a packed UN General Assembly Hall.
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