Landmark Holocaust program at Clark U of Hartford  launches Holocaust, genocide initiative

By Mara Dresner

WORCESTER – Clark University is home to the Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies. Featuring both an undergraduate program and a landmark doctoral program, the Strassler Center is the first and only institute of its kind. Since it was established in 1998, it has gained international standing as the sole program to train students for Ph.D. degrees in Holocaust History and Genocide Studies.

Dr. Debórah Dwork is the Rose Professor of Holocaust History and the director of the Strassler Center. Dwork, one of the first historians to study the Holocaust and to collect oral histories from Holocaust survivors, uses a variety of sources, including government and philanthropic agency archives, newspapers, letters, memoirs and interviews, to understand the causes and impacts of the Holocaust and other genocides of the twentieth century.

“The Ph.D. program in Holocaust studies is unique in the world,” said David Coyne, director of the Clark University Hillel. “Anyone who is doing anything, whether it is a breakthrough program, a book or a film on the Holocaust or genocide brings it here. Our future professors, museum curators and documentarians study here.”

In March, the University of Hartford’s Greenberg Center for Judaic Studies launched its new Genocide and Holocaust Education Initiative. The inaugural event featured Rwanda president Paul Kagame for an academic symposium as well as a public lecture.

This fall, the Greenberg Center will host several events related to the Initiative, including the exhibit “Dreams and Nightmares: Genocide Prevention Now and the Work of Israel W. Charny” and a sneak preview of the new documentary film, Hidden Holocaust at Sobibor, marking the 70th anniversary of the Sobibor Revolt in October 1943, as well as other programs.