NJ Jewish News |

In May 1979, the Center for Holocaust Studies at Brookdale Community College was housed in a corner of the library on the school’s Lincroft campus. Its resources consisted of a dozen books, a small bookcase, and a file cabinet.

Twenty-seven years later, the center has earned a national reputation as an educational resource for the study of the Holocaust, genocide, and racial intolerance. Since 2000, it has been cited as a “Center of Excellence” by the Jewish Foundation for the Righteous. The facility was the first Holocaust study center in the state; now there are 19 others.

Ironically, a 1979 television program helped launch the center, according to Prof. Jack Needle and Dr. Seymour Siegler, who cofounded the facility and still serve as its codirectors (both Middletown residents have since retired from their teaching positions at BCC in 2004 and 1997, respectively).

Holocaust, a controversial NBC miniseries, had begun to generate discussion and debate on a period of history that had largely been ignored by movie studios and television networks, Siegler recalled. When a $200 grant became available for BCC faculty to participate in a “lunch and learn” professional development program, he and Needle secured the funding and focused the program on the Holocaust.

Some of the more than 200 Holocaust survivors who lived in Monmouth County volunteered to share their experiences with an audience. It marked the first time many had spoken publicly about their ordeals — and it was the first time many in the audience had heard a first-hand account.

As a result of the overwhelming response, Needle and Siegler formally named the center, established a board of directors, and began to search for ways in which the center could expand its programs.

Developing a personal rapport with the county’s Holocaust survivors and establishing links to schools and county agencies were critical to ensuring the program’s expansion and success, Needle said (see below). They discovered that many in the survivor community were eager to join forces with the center. As word of the center’s mission spread, scholars and authors of Holocaust literature, including Klaus Heck, Yuri Suhl, Miriam Novitch, David Wyman, John Loftus, Yehva Baur, and Morris Dees offered their services as guest speakers.

From the onset, the center did not receive funding from BCC or any other regular source; then and now, the facility is largely supported by the efforts of the volunteer board of directors, according to board president Albert Zager of Fair Haven.

“The center is an exciting amalgamation of people of good will,” said Zager. “It thrives under the auspices of Brookdale, an extremely nurturing and dynamic institution.”

The center’s operating budget totals $167,000; the center raises the entire amount through fund-raising efforts that include memberships and donations. A grants committee has also secured monies from the New Jersey Council for the Humanities, the Jewish Federation of Greater Monmouth County, Commerce Bank, the Zobel Foundation, the Monmouth County Arts Council, and the B’nai Sholom/Beth El Foundation of Temple Beth El of Oakhurst, among other sources.

During the 1980s, Siegler and Needle became involved with the state Department of Education’s efforts to develop Holocaust education curricula for New Jersey’s schools. They met with department officials and provided input that pertained to teacher training and lesson plans. By 1994, the state had mandated Holocaust education for students in kindergarten through grade 12.

Eleven years ago, Dale Daniels of Holmdel listened as a Holocaust survivor, who was also a center volunteer, shared her experiences as a 12-year-old on a Kindertransport. Daniels quickly added her name to the volunteer list, became a board member, and has been the center’s executive director for eight years. Meanwhile, the center had moved around the campus; it quickly outgrew its one bookshelf and relocated to a larger space near a stairwell. Its next home was an area between a series of partitions in one of Brookdale’s open-space classrooms. Next came an entire room in another campus building. Finally, in 1994, the center moved into a building it could call its own.

As a result, Daniels began her tenure by coordinating programs and unpacking boxes. She also organized a “treasure trove” of resources that had accumulated since 1979. More than 5,000 volumes of Holocaust literature are currently available at the center, and a media collection of more than 600 videotapes, DVDs, CDs, and audiotapes continues to grow. All materials are available for circulation.

A resource file containing newspaper and magazine articles that relate to the center’s mission serves as a research tool for teachers and students. Archives of photos, survivors’ compositions, and professional and student artwork are often loaned to schools, libraries, and community programs. Survivors and their family members also have been the source of donated books, letters, journals, and other artifacts that are on permanent display at the center.

A teacher resource center contains a large collection of curricula, lesson plans, and study guides, and center staff members regularly present in-service workshops on-site and off. Students also visit the center to participate in programs based on teacher needs and requests, Daniels said.

The center also maintains a speakers bureau listing survivors (the most-requested speakers), educators, and staff members, she added.

World events and historical perspective have always played a role in the development of the center. Since 1981, Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day is observed each April, and there are displays and material on hand pertaining to slavery throughout the world, the Irish famine of the 1800s, and incidents of genocide in Rwanda, Cambodia, Tibet, and Darfur.

“In the future, I think the center will continue to help people understand that religious, ethnic, and racial crimes affect society as a whole,” said Needle. “Cognition leads to awareness, and awareness leads to action. This, in turn, can bring about a reduction in the types of cataclysmic events we’ve seen take place in the world.”

SINCE ITS CREATION in 1979, the Center for Holocaust Studies at Brookdale Community College in Lincroft has become a nationally recognized educational resource on the subjects of genocide and prejudice reduction.

Throughout the past 27 years, the center has expanded its programs and community partnerships, and the growth patterns will continue, according to Jack Needle and Seymour Siegler, cofounders and codirectors of the center, and Dale Daniels, its executive director.

The center has devised ways to use the history and lessons of the Holocaust as tools to support the work of other organizations, such as the Monmouth County prosecutor’s office in Freehold and the doctorate of ministry program in pastoral care and counseling at Drew University in Madison, Daniels said.

In 2003, the center created a Train the Trainers Program that sends 50 county law enforcement officers each year to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, for an intensive two-day training session. A three-day follow-up workshop is subsequently scheduled at Brookdale, Daniels said. More than 150 officers have attended the trainings.

In 2004, the center developed a 12-week program that is a mandatory part of the sentencing for young offenders. Offenders attend a weekly discussion at the center; parents, detectives from the county’s bias crime committee, school social workers, and juvenile probation officers also participate.

“The anecdotal evidence shows that this program is working,” said Daniels. “Some of the kids continue to perform community service when it’s no longer mandatory for them, and many come and visit the center on their own, just to talk or to be a part of activities here. It’s obvious that their perspectives have changed in a positive way.”

Since 2005, Holocaust survivor testimony has been incorporated into the training of students of pastoral care and counseling at Drew University.

“A center board member who is an Episcopal priest with expertise as a chaplain and pastoral counselor in hospital environments and who is affiliated with Drew felt that hearing the stories of survivors would help students form a deeper and more powerful understanding of trauma and loss,” said Siegler. “This type of keen understanding is at the center of their professional lives.”

A number of annual programs continue to be among the lifeblood of the center. Since the facility opened, Holocaust survivors, about 200 of whom live in Monmouth County, have shared their stories with public, private, and parochial school students. Survivor stories also are presented in schools in book, exhibit, and media formats, and survivors often speak at center programs and community events.

Four years ago, the bonds that formed between speaker and student led to the Adopt-a-Survivor Program, in which several students spend time with a survivor to learn his or her personal history before, during, and after World War II.

For the last 20 years, the center has offered an annual two-week summer teacher training institute that provides intensive study of the history of genocide and the Holocaust. The workshops take place throughout the school year, and participants devise teaching strategies and tools for prejudice reduction, according to Siegler.

In May 1980, the center conducted its first annual colloquium; in subsequent years, more than 2,500 students, teachers, and community members have visited the Lincroft campus each spring to hear noted scholars, historians, and other public figures.

Other workshops and contests have evolved over the years, including the annual Catherine Woolf Student Leadership Conference, which educates and empowers middle school students to counteract prejudice in their schools, and the annual Luna Kaufman Writing and Art Contest, which attracts the participation of hundreds of students throughout New Jersey. Chosen submissions are included in “Flowers from the Ashes,” a student anthology produced by the center.

And two years ago, in honor of its 25th anniversary, the center created Survival of the Human Spirit: Triumph Over Adversity, a series of library exhibits highlighting survivors’ experiences.

“The survivors are the center’s master educators,” said Daniels. “Despite their harrowing experiences, they share messages of hope, healing, and the need to improve our world. Their messages will be a continuing focus of center programs and services.”

— JILL HUBER