On 2 March 2017, HKHTC’s Director of Education Simon Li addressed near 200 students at the Baptist Lui Ming Choi Secondary School. Besides discussing the Holocaust, the Shanghai refuge, a little-documented chapter of the Holocaust, was also explored.
In February 2017, HKHTC Director of Education Simon Li lectured on Holocaust Denial in the Chinese University’s MA programme in Comparative and Public History. A number of local media professionals also sat in Mr Li’s lectures.
We are delighted to announce the launch of the Fellowship; a series of five emotionally and intellectually challenging workshops which will culminate in participating students from Hong Kong travelling to Poland to visit sites related to the Holocaust. Amongst other places they will visit the Ghettos of Lodz, Warsaw & Krakow and three death camps; Chelmno, Treblinka, Auschwtiz & Auschwitz-Birekenau.
The Fellowship is a once in a life time opportunity to learn about the Holocaust on a much deeper level. It will begin in January each year and the trip to Poland is usually scheduled to take place between March and October.
For more information on The Fellowship, please do not hesitate to contact our office at info@hkhtc.org.
In February, our Holocaust Centre was delighted to co-organize a free community screening of Defying the Nazis: The Sharps’ War and a public discussion event with the film’s co-executive producer Deanna Byck in Hong Kong. It was truly encouraging to see that many of our young generations from diverse ethnic backgrounds were in our audience to learn about a remarkably heroic story during the Holocaust.
On 23 January 2017, the Hong Kong Holocaust & Tolerance Centre marked the International Holocaust Remembrance Day with a moving, inspiring ceremony at the Community Hall in Sai Ying Pun. Many Jewish and local community members were in attendance, as were more than 30 diplomats and dignitaries, including The Hon. Tung Chee-hwa and The Hon. Donald Tsang, both former Chief Executives of Hong Kong, and Ms Florence Hui, the Under Secretary for Home Affairs of the HKSAR Government. We were honoured that Micha Gelber, an 81-year-old Dutchman who lived through the Holocaust, travelled from the Netherlands to Hong Kong to share his story of survival with us.
Please click here for more photos from our UN Holocaust Memorial Day 2017 event and you can also watch a video of the evening on our Facebook page.
We are delighted that our centre’s events with Mr Nobuki Sugihara, son of the Japanese diplomat who saved many Jewish lives, and his family’s heroic story during WWII are profiled in an in-depth article in the Post Magazine this weekend.
The 4-page feature story, which can be accessed here, is published in the 13 November 2016 edition of the Sunday Morning Post.
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The HKHTC have had wonderful press coverage for the visit of Nobuki Sugihara, son of Righteous Among the Nations Chiune Sugihara. During his week-long visit in Hong Kong, Mr Sugihara toured 8 high schools and universities and addressed over 2000 students.
The Sunday edition of Ming Pao, a well-respected and widely-circulated Chinese daily, covered Mr Sugihara’s meeting with students from the Harrow International School Hong Kong at the venue of our centre’s “Asian Righteous Among the Nations” Exhibition on the University of Hong Kong campus. Please click here to read the Sunday Ming Pao feature article in Chinese.
HKHTC is proud to announce the following student winners:
In the Visual Arts Category: Patrick Hawkey – Discovery College, for his sculpture illustrating Holocaust survivor Dan Pagis’ iconic poem, “Written in Pencil in the Sealed Railway Car”.
In the Performing Arts Category: Martha Chow and Wind Yuen – Sha Tin College, for their shadow dance commemorating the Armenian Genocide.
In the Writing Category: Juliet Leung – Heep Yunn School, for her creative short story on the Rwandan genocide.
We congratulate them as well as over 100 students from across 14 secondary schools in Hong Kong and Mainland China who participated in the 2015 Contest.
On Wednesday, January 28, HKHTC Director of Education, Simon Goldberg, delivered a talk at the “Talking Genocides” forum organized by the School of Modern Languages and Cultures at Hong Kong University to mark the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau. 50 doctoral students and academics were in attendance.
Simon’s talk dealt with the scholary discourse on Holocaust representation and issues within the field of comparative genocide studies. Fellow panelist and moderator, Dr Roland Vogt of HKU’s Department of European Studies, addressed the role of the Holocaust in European political imagination and culture. Finally, Dr Facil Tesfaye of HKU’s African Studies Department discussed the role of census data/statistics in the 1994 Rwandan genocide, and its legacy for African politics and peacekeeping on the continent.
Dr Tesfaye’s new book, Statisques(s) et génocide au Rwanda: La genèse d’un système de catégorisation génocidaire, was also launched on this occasion.
To mark the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the Hong Kong Holocaust and Tolerance Centre will hosted its first-ever half-day teachers’ workshop on themes relevant to the end of the Second World War and liberation.
The three talks included pedagogical methodologies for classroom use. Speakers were Simon Goldberg and Prof. Glenn Timmermans (Faculty of Arts & Humanities, University of Macau) and Miguel Maneros De Lemos (Faculty of Law at University of Macau).
The workshop was attended by 45 secondary school and university educators from Hong Kong and Macao, representing the following faculties: History, English, Philosophy, and Religious Studies.
