The Hong Kong Holocaust and Tolerance Centre collaborated on two public screenings of Claude Lanzmann’s monumental testament to The Holocaust, the film Shoah, as part of the Hong Kong International Film Festival. The screenings were introduced by HKHTC’s Chair, Jeremy Amias, and followed by a discussion with professor Glenn Timmermans of Macau University.
HKHTC Board member, Silvain Gilbert, has been active all year going to schools in Hong Kong to tell pupils about his experiences as a hidden child, during the Holocaust. Children have been captivated by his story and primary source information about the Holocaust and for many it stimulated further enquiries and study.
To commemorate the United Nations Holocaust Memorial Day the HKHTC held a memorial concert titled “Music from the Ashes” at the Hong Kong Academy of Performing Arts. The concert featured musicians from Hong Kong, the United States and Israel who played music composed by eminent Jewish composers who perished in Nazi concentration and death camps. The leading musician was by the Professor Allan Sternfield of the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance. Over 400 people attended the concert, including Consul Generals, local dignitaries as well as a diverse cross selection of the Hong Kong public.
As part of the Hong Kong Jewish film festival, we screened two films, the “Heart Of Auschwitz” and “The Last flight of Petr Ginz,” to more than 700 local school children at more than 11 different schools. These events enabled students to learn about aspects of the Holocaust in a unique and engaging manner. We supplied speakers to introduce the films and run question and answer sessions afterwards.
Guest speaker and Head of Education at Yad Vashem – Ephraim Kaye, addressed students and academics at Hong Kong University in a joint lecture organised by the HKHTC and the University’s Modern Languages department.
The Resource Centre was officially inaugurated on May 14th 2012, during a ceremony at Elsa High School, Shau Kei Wan. Former Israeli Chief Rabbi and Child Holocaust Survivor, Rabbi Israel Meir Lau, attended the event as a guest of honour.
Local dignitaries as well as prominent members of the community attended the opening.
The HKHTC’s newly-appointed director of education Simon Li, a public historian and a university academic before joining the centre, visited the youngest Holocaust survivor from Schindler’s List in Jerusalem this fall. Before moving to Israel and establishing a family, Eva Levi, 77, lived a very different reality. She is now also the youngest person alive who lived through the horror of the Holocaust thanks to the famous Oskar Schindler, who was named Righteous Among the Nations by the Israeli government in 1963.
Click here to learn more about Oskar Schindler’s List.
Later this year AHO, the world’s biggest Holocaust association, is to stage China’s first international conference on the topic in Harbin. The north-eastern city once had a thriving Jewish community, but a more important stimulant for local interest in the conference will be parallels to be drawn, rightly or wrongly, between the Holocaust and Japanese wartime atrocities. The Imperial Japanese Army used the city for experiments on humans, including vivisection and dropping anthrax from low-flying planes, killing an estimated 400,000 people.
Read more about this through the link below
http://www.economist.com/news/international/21584008-study-holocaust-expanding-worldwidefor-differing-reasons-bearing-witness-ever
The Hong Kong Holocaust and Tolerance Centre (HKHTC) is concerned about the growing popularity of using Adolf Hitler and other Nazi symbols as cultural icons in Thailand. As an organization dedicated to promoting Holocaust education in Asia, we see this trend as the result of a lack of effective education and awareness of the Second World War and the Holocaust.
Even if those using Hitler’s drawing at Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University did not intend to support Nazi ideas and anti-semitism, their actions reduce the horrific significance of Hitler’s legacy in human history. The apologies and condemnations released following this shameful incident are appropriate. However, the best way to ensure against similar incidents being repeated is through education, particularly among younger people who may be less familiar with the mass genocide wrought by Hitler and the Nazis. HKHTC will continue its efforts to actively spread the lessons of the Holocaust and the importance of tolerance in Asia.
