Speaking with a Holocaust Survivor

Library Type

Public

Description:

Kutztown Community Library is located in a homogenous area. To embrace and discover the diversity beyond our borders, we host adult programs each month featuring a nationality, race, religion, or identity.

Motivated by International Holocaust Remembrance Day, we focused our January program on Judaism. Through the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, we requested to have a survivor share his or her experience. The "Speaking with a Holocaust Survivor" program provided participants with a unique, perhaps life-changing opportunity to connect with a person who had lived through this major event. Participants gained a new understanding of the historical significance of the event as they put a face to a tragedy they may have only read about. The program also created a forum in which they could ask questions. This program was virtual allowing our patrons to interact with the survivor and moderator located in Washington D.C.

The US Holocaust Memorial Museum has nearly 60 survivors who serve as volunteers sharing their personal history and provide programs at no cost to the library. In order to ensure that programs are respectful, we had many communications with the museum to answer questions about why we felt this was beneficial to our community. We also had to sign an agreement about who we were offering this program to and why. After this vetting process we were connected with survivor, Sam Ponczak. Mr. Ponczak spent his early years in a German controlled ghetto in Warsaw, Poland. Though he was young, he remembers his mother carrying him across a frozen river to escape into Soviet occupied Poland. Once there, he and his mother were arrested and sent to a Siberian labor camp where the family spent the remainder of the war.

Following the event, the library emailed a program evaluation to participants receiving the highest response rate from any of our sessions. One participant responded that it "was extremely important to hear from someone who lived through the Holocaust...lt is so impactful to hear someone's first-hand experience." Another observer stated, "There are so few survivors of the Holocaust remaining and for his story to be told and heard is remarkable." When asked to explain what struck them as noteworthy, one responder said, "The reason for the speaker volunteering at the museum was because his friend heard other Jews saying 'tell our story' as they were being taken to their death. He was an incredible speaker."

Civic and social literacy is defined as "understanding the importance of community engagement which allows individuals to interact with one another, in a participatory manner; invoking societal change". Societal change often happens when people put a face to an event and feel empathy. This program allowed participants from a time and area very far removed from the horrors of the Holocaust to learn from someone who lived through it. They asked questions and engaged in discussion in order to learn, as one participant noted, a subject "we must never forget". The US Holocaust Memorial Museum who focuses on the hashtag #neveragain presented this program that impacted diversity, equality, and inclusion.

To advertise, the library put out flyers and created a social media campaign marketing the program as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. We have learned that our virtual programs often have great success with electronic marketing and in this case, most of the participants signed up using the weekly e-newsletter.

The success of "Speaking with a Holocaust Survivor" program is a proud part of the Kutztown Community Library making our community a more welcoming and understanding place as we strive to educate and inform other on the world around them with our rewarding diversity programs.

Tags:  Adults  Civic & Social Literacy  EDI