In Their Own Words: Holocaust Survivors Probe the Inconceivable

About the Program

Category: Libraries (Best in Category)

Year: 2009

Maricopa County District’s library in Sunrise, Arizona presents an annual program to increase the community’s knowledge and understanding of the Holocaust. The program was in response to requests from high-school teachers and others in the community for the library to provide programming on this important subject. The 2008 program was expanded into a three-night seminar, for an intergenerational audience of teens and adults, using lecture, film, discussion, displays, and personal narrative. The first night’s lecture prepared the audience for the vocabulary, time-line, and emotional impact of the film shown on the second night, prepared the participants for the Survivor’s Testimony presented on the third night. On the second night the documentary film, Kitty-Return to Auschwitz, was shown in which Survivor Kitty Hart brings her adult son with her to face, for the first time since her liberation, the place of her enslavement by the Nazis. On the third night, Abe and Lillie Meth recounted their harrowing stories of survival and inspiring lessons of hope. The program was so popular that audience members arrived an hour early and waited in line.