The arrival of a new president at Mercer County Community College in West Windsor this month provided the context for a meeting of the New Jersey Commission on Holocaust Education and for expressions of support for the work of the Mercer County Holocaust/Genocide Research Center there.

Prominent educational and administrative county executives turned out for the Feb. 9 meeting, where a warm welcome was extended to the new president, Patricia Donohue, a mathematician who formerly served as president of Luzerne County Community College in Nantico, Pa.

The purpose of the meeting with Donohue was “to set the tone so we can meet with her in the future to discuss activities against bias and bigotry,” said commission executive director Paul Winkler.

Mercer County superintendent of schools Michael Klavon noted that Donohue has a strong background in working on diversity issues.

“I’m very anxious for Dr. Donohue to get started in her tenure as the new president,” said Klavon, who serves on the board of the college. “We want to make sure that the faculty and student body at Mercer County Community College remain committed to human rights issues.”

Klavon said that the Holocaust/Genocide Research Center at the college serves as a resource not only for its students but for students throughout the county. Local teachers benefit from borrowing curricular materials from the center, including software, films, CDs, study sheets, and curriculum guides, he said.

Also on hand for the meeting was Saul Goldwasser, director of the resource center, which is a joint project of MCCC, the commission, and the Office of the Mercer County Executive.

“We continue to try to make people aware of the genocides going on. One of our major concerns right now is what’s happening in Darfur,” Goldwasser said, referring to the region of Sudan where as many as 400,000 civilians have been slaughtered over the past three years. “There’s an attempt to make our students aware of that.”

Mercer County Executive Brian Hughes emphasized the importance of the work being done by the resource center to ensure that people remember the Holocaust and its impact.

“I think it’s a sign — the president coming here during her first week in office — that she’s going to make a recommitment of the community college to the center and make sure it goes forward in the college,” Hughes said in an interview. “She’s coming in with full knowledge of what the center is all about.”

As he welcomed Donohue, Hughes expressed the dedication of Mercer County and its Board of Freeholders to the resource center.

“We want to tell you that, as in the past, this educational center and all the activities of this center are totally supported by the Mercer County government and my administration,” he said. “I think it’s important for this commission and this center to have the president, in her very first week on campus, recommit the college’s participation in this center and the fact that we’re going to move forward in a very positive way.”

In response, Donohue spoke about a trip she made to Rwanda after the 1994 genocide in which an estimated 800,000 people were killed. “Just being in that country for a couple of days, you could feel the kinds of hostility that could have allowed some of the kinds of things that happened there to get under way,” she said.

Donohue also spoke about participating in an educational mission to the former Soviet Union, during which she traveled to Moldavia with a Jewish mission participant who was searching for the roots of family members lost in the Holocaust. “It was a very moving experience to join her in search of family history,” she said.

In addition, Donohue said, she and her husband joined some Jewish friends in visiting the Dachau concentration camp during a trip to Europe.

“You cannot do those kinds of things and not understand the importance of having a Holocaust center,” she said, “and being sure that people continue to learn how to prevent those things from ever taking hold again.”