Past Events

Posters of  PJR Events: Fall 2015 – Spring 2016

 FALL 2018 Events

  • October 18 – Kinderblock 66 – 7 pm Ciccone Theater.
    Documentary of 1000 boys who were survivors of Buchenwald concentration camp. Producer Steve Moskovic
  • October 23 – At the Foot of Ararat: Armenian Folk Dance– flyer 12:30 p.m. – 1:30 p.m.  and 7:00 p.m. – 8:30 p.m. TEC-128
    Traditional village dances of ancient Armenian culture. Susan Lind-Sinanian, Textile Curator at the Armenian Museum of America in Watertown, MA will introduce and teach line dances that she has collected over the last forty years from immigrants and survivors of a lost generation from western Armenia.
  • October 30 – Holocaust Survivor Trudy Album shares her story…..10:30 am – 12pm   – Paramus Campus – TEC-128  view photos
    Trudy Album was born in 1929 in Czechoslovakia. When the Nazis invaded, her family was sent to a ghetto, then to several concentration camps. Trudy arrived in the women’s section of Birkenau, a sub-camp of Auschwitz, before her 15th birthday. Her mother and three younger siblings had already been gassed to death.Trudy has worked with the Holocaust Museum & Center for Tolerance and Education for several decades. Though it is difficult to share her painful experiences, Trudy is committed to ensuring that the memory, lessons, and legacies of the Holocaust are carried on.
  • November 13 – LGBTQ Awareness Day – 11 am – 2:30 pm A-104
    • 11:00 – 12:15 Chris Mosier  – Transgender keynote speaker, a Hall of Fame triathlete.
    • 12:30 -1:30 pm Bergen PRIDE panel moderated by Jennifer Long, a transgender retired sergeant major.

Genocide Speaker Series – via Skype Sessions 5th floor Meadowlands Campus 11:30-1pm

Spring 2018 Events

  • April 24 – Tuesday evening 7 pm – TEC-128
    Out of My Great Sorrows: Armenian Genocide & Artist Mary Zakarian – the story of a woman whose life and work were shaped by the experiences of her parents, who were Armenian Genocide survivors. It follows Zakarian’s personal problems resulting from a traumatic background and provides a cultural history of the Armenian immigrant experience in the U.S.  By examining Mary Zakarian’s life and art, the authors  bring a fresh perspective of the Armenian experience, as well as an understanding of all people who have struggled to express themselves in the face of injustice and oppression.

  • April 19 – Thursday 12 pm  L-147 – (includes lunch)
    Remembrance and Beyond: Hillel is hosting Bella Miller, a remarkable Holocaust survivor. Bella Miller was raised in Boryslaw, Poland. She and her family hid from the Nazis, escaped to the forest, but were eventually captured and sent to Auschwitz.
  • April 18 – Wed. 2-4 pm – A104
    “Together” author Ann Arnold and Holocaust survivor Mark Schonwetter – Ann Arnold’s book, Together: A Journey for Survival, chronicles her grandmother’s courageous story of saving her family from the Nazis. Mark Schonwetter, Ann’s father, was just 6 years old, when he was forced to flee his home in Poland. The story portrays the strength of a mother’s love and the incredible courage of good people during the worst of times.  Ann earned the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Heroes for Tolerance award for her work and lectures on tolerance. View video.
  • April 9 – Attorney Rebecca Salk – Preventing Genocide – Law
  • April 4 – Maud Dahme – A Holocaust Survivor Remembers: Reflections on Being a Hidden Childpicture of Maud
    When she was four years old, Dahme’s native Netherlands was invaded and several of her immediate family members were sent to the Sobibor extermination camp in Poland.  She survived in hiding with her sister, thanks to the brave and righteous Westerink family. Dahme will discuss the significance of genocide education and the importance of emphasizing the efforts of people who hid, protected and rescued Jewish people with no concern for their own safety. Maud Dahme has been a  member of the New Jersey Commission on Holocaust Education since 1982. She is the author of “Chocolate, the Taste of Freedom”. View Video.
  • March 6 Tuesday evening @7pm –
    “Armenia!” At The Met: Making Medieval Armenian Art and Culture Relevant” – Dr. Helen Evans of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. TEC-128.   View Photos from “Armenia! at the Met”
  • Feb 27 – 11 am – 2:00 pm – “How to Defuse A Bomb: The Project Children Story” film viewing and discussion with Denis Mulcahy – A104
  • Feb 19 – 12:30 – 8pm – Interfaith Awareness Day
  • Jan. 27 Saturday 1-4 pm – 11th Annual Student Award Ceremony – Holocaust, Genocide, Stalinist Repression TEC-128

FALL 2017 Events

Holocaust survivor Norbert Bikales – View Bikales Poster PDF
Date: November 30 – 11:30-1 pm – Meadowlands campus.

Dr. Norbert Bikales was born in Germany and sent on a Kindertransport to France in 1939 after his parents and brother were deported to Poland. He never saw his parents again. He spent much of the war in various children’s homes throughout France, most of the time looked after by OSE, a Jewish welfare organization that helped save him and well over a thousand other Jewish children. A part of this period is depicted in the award-winning documentary The Children of Chabannes. Arriving in the U.S. when he was 17, he studied hard to overcome the disruption in his education and became a well-known polymer science chemist.

Marijuana Flyer Marijuana: a Road to…? – November 16 TEC-128

Holocaust survivor Erwin Ganz
– co-sponsored by NJ Commission on Holocaust Education DOE
Date: Tuesday, November 14 – 9:30 -11 am A-104
Erwin Ganz talks about his life as a young boy growing up in Nazi Germany, before, during and after Kristallnacht.

Did you miss this event?

4th Annual Transgender Awareness Day 2017 (View Poster PDF) – Wed. November 8th – 9:30 am -3:30 pm

Genocide Studies Speaker Series—

Forced into Genocide Memoirs of an Armenian Soldier in the Ottoman Turkish Army (View Poster PDF)

Date: Thursday, November 2 – evening 7 – 8:30 pm, TEC-128
Adrienne G. Alexanian, presents the memoir of Yervant Edward Alexanian, an eyewitness to the massacre and dislocation of his family and countrymen in Ottoman Turkey during World War I.

Author Norman Naimark, “Stalin and the Question of Genocide.” View Poster PDF
Norman M. Naimark is a Professor of East European Studies at Stanford University and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.
Date: November 7 – 11:40-1 pm Meadowlands 5th floor

1917-2017 – 100 year Anniversary of the Russian Revolution, also known as the Bolshevik Revolution,
Date: November 7 – 1:30 – 4:30 pm, C211 – View Stalin’s Terror Poster PDF
Marxist ideas about building a Socialist Paradise devolved into a dystopian state – presided over by Josef Stalin – which terrorized the population for more than three decades, sending millions of soviet citizens to concentration camps (Gulags); where they were killed or died from starvation, overwork, and disease.

  • 1:45 – 3:00 Jacob Mankovich, “Stalinist Genocide”, a new college curriculum
  • 3:15-4:30 – L. Kowalski, “Hell on Earth”

Short video about Yefim Milshtein, author of the book “Journey through Hell,” which tells the story of his survival of both Nazi death camps and the Soviet GULAG.

Summer 2017

Mann v Ford The True story of the Lanaape First Nation People’s fight to make Ford Motor Co. stop poisoning them. Friday, June 30th, 2017 – 6:00 pm in Room –A-104

Spring 2017 Events:
Armenian Genocide Series – April 2017

  • Lerna Ekmekcioglu – Survivors into Minorities: Armenians in Post-Genocide Turkey
    April 17 Monday 1:30 – 3:00 pm S-111
    Lerna Ekmekcioglu follows survivors of the 1915 Armenian Genocide who remained inside Turkish borders in the 1920s and 30s. Lerna is an Associate Professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and author of “Recovering Armenia”.
  • They Shall Not Perish – The Story of Near East Relief – The Heroic American Response to the Refugee Crisis During the Armenian Genocide – a 1-hour documentary followed by Q&A with Executive Producer, Shant Mardirossian
    April 26, 2017 Wednesday -7:00 pm TEC-128

Yom Ha Shoah – Holocaust Memorial programs

  • Holocaust Survivor – Sami Speaks
    April 20     Thursday 9:30 -11:30 am – TEC-128
    Sami Steigmann     is a Holocaust survivor and motivational speaker. As a toddler Sami was subjected to cruel Nazi medical experimentation followed by starvation, in the Transnistria labor camp. He suffered all of his life with head, neck, back pain which caused him chronic pain.

Sami travels the world to share his inspirational life lessons. Last year, Sami was awarded the Harmony Power Award at the NYC Museum of Tolerance, along with a proclamation from the NY State Assembly recognizing him as an example of courage, compassion and for his work speaking with students and visitors to New York. – co-sponsored by the NJ Commission on Holocaust Education DOE

  • Sugihara: Being an Upstander in a Tumultuous World.
    April 20 Thursday 1:45 pm – 3 pm A-104 (view Photos on Flickr)
    At great risk to himself and his family, Japanese diplomat Chiune Sugihara dared to do what was right, signing transit visas in order to save thousands of Jews from extermination by the Nazis. Mark Salomon, whose grandfather received visa #299, will explore why Sugihara acted as he did, as well as the lessons for us today. Sugihara was the only Japanese person recognized as Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem. To learn more: watch “Persona Non Grata” movie trailer – co-sponsored by the NJ Commission on Holocaust Education DOE
  • “Everything is Illuminated” Holocaust themed Film
    April 24     Monday 11:30 am- 1:30 pm – A104
    –     co-sponsored with Student Affairs

Other Programs

Addiction Series – April 3 Monday A-104 9:30-12

  • Film: Under the Influence: The Science of Drug Abuse and Q&A
  • The Young Adult Brain and Drug Use: What College Students Should Know, a lecture by Dr. Sion Kim Harris
    Dr. Harris, a Harvard Medical School research scientist, will present the latest science on the young adult brain, and how different addictive drugs affect the brain. Learn about the vulnerabilities of the young adult brain and what science says about how to promote a healthy, youthful brain for years to come.
  • Climate Change Film & Discussion -Anthropocene & Empire
    • Film screening and discussion: The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable, Lecture III: “History” (2016, ~45 minutes), April 6, 11:00am – 12:15 pm, C313
    • Film screening and discussion: Nero’s Guests – journalist Palagummi Sainath documents the increasing phenomenon of debt-induced suicides in India’s “cotton belt.”
      April 13       Thursday 11-12:15, C313
  • Teach-In on Immigration and Executive Orders –
    April 18 Tuesday – C211 – 12:30- 1:45 pm Cheryl Lin, Immigration Attorney
    2 -3 pm Dialogue & Mindfulness

Fall 2016 Events:

 

PJR Events in the News:

Spring 2016 Events:

Rwandan genocide survivor speaks

PJR Director Tom LaPointe with Eugenie

Eugenie Mukeshimana Poster – Wed April 13, 2016 

Dreamland: Addiction Series

APRIL 27th via Skype, author Sam Quinones – concerning his best-selling book Dreamland which tells the story of the overprescribing of opiates, the rise of the Mexican drug cartel and the heroin epidemic in the US   View this recorded interview on Adobe Connect’s web page

Holocaust remembrance Katka Reszke”Return of the Jew & The Meshugene Effect”

March 31s, 2016 – 12:30 -1:30 pm room C321
Overview: Katka Reszke shares the personal narratives of Polish women (including her own), who embarked on a pursuit of Jewish identity following an intuition about their Jewish descent. These extraordinary memories are set against the landscape of troubled Polish-Jewish history and a new curious Polish-Jewish present. “The Meshugene Effect” –   www.katkareszke.com

Spring 2016 Forgiveness Project

“The F Word: Stories of Forgiveness” displayed Feb. 29 to March 10 in the hallway by room S-152 at the main campus. The F exhibition was created by The Forgiveness Project, an organization that uses personal stories to explore how concepts of reconciliation, conflict resolution and dialogue can be used to break cycles of violence and restore hope.

“Healing Power of Stories around Forgiveness and Reconciliation”

Thursday, March 10 – room C-211 – 11 a.m. Panel – Gayle Kirschenbaum, film maker and director, will share her film “Look at Us Now Mother” which follows the transformation of an abusive mother & tumultuous mother-daughter relationship.

Fall 2015 “Teacher, Torturer, Executioner: Comrade Duch’s Trial at the Khmer Rouge Tribunal” lecture by Alex Hinton

Thursday, December 10th – 11:30 – 1:00 p.m. Meadowlands

Alex Hinton is Director of the Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights and Professor of Anthropology and Global Affairs at Rutgers University, Newark. He is the immediate past president of the International Association of Genocide Scholars, and currently holds the UNESCO Chair in Genocide Prevention. He is the author of the award-winning “Why Did They Kill? Cambodia in the Shadow of Genocide,” and nine edited or co-edited collections on genocide and mass violence.

Fall 2015 Genocide – Humanitarian Resistance in Ottoman Syria 1915-1916

Speaker: Khatchig Mouradian
Thursday, October 22, 2015 Meadowlands Campus

Khatchig Mouradian is a visiting assistant professor at the Division of Global Affairs at Rutgers University and the coordinator of the Armenian Genocide Program at the University’s Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights (CGHR). He is the recipient of the Gulbenkian Armenian Studies research fellowship, the Hrant Dink Freedom and Justice Medal, and was the editor of the Armenian Weekly from 2007-2014.

Spring 2015 Genocide Events: Armenian 100th & Holocaust Speakers

The 100th Anniversary of the Armenian Genocide PDF

Holocaust speakers: Powel Goldherz & Isaac York – concentration camp survivors

Spring 2015 Armenian Genocide – Dr. Taner Akcam – Forced Assimilation and Islamization as Structural Elements  of Armenian Genocide

Dr. Taner Akcam – April 13 – Monday 9:30 – 10:45 a.m. • C-211

Historian and sociologist, Akcam, who was born in Ardahan, Turkey, was imprisoned for political speech while still a university student in Ankara and later adopted as a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International in 1976. Akcam is widely recognized as one of the first Turkish scholars to write extensively on the Ottoman-Turkish Genocide of the Armenians in the early 20th century. He has more than 10 scholarly books published on the Armenian genocide and Turkish nationalism. His most well-known are “A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility;” “Judgment at Istanbul: The Armenian Genocide Trials,” and “Young Turks’ Crime Against Humanity: The Armenian Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing in the Ottoman Empire.”

Spring 2015 Hibakusha Panel Discussion with Survivors of the Atomic Bomb

Deliberative Dialogues 2014