The Holocaust Centre of New Zealand is expanding its activities into Auckland, Waikato and Northland in order to widen engagement with our diverse communities and to reach more schools and students for Holocaust education.
On Sunday 11 August 2024 our Auckland community was given an extensive briefing on the Centre’s background and our wide-ranging work. We heard from Deb Hart, board Chair. Kris Clancy, Education Director, Rachel Korpus, board member and Gillian Wess, CEO.
Our special guest speaker was Aubrey Mason, Deputy Principal of Onehunga High Schoool and a graduate of the 2023 Inge Woolf Memorial Seminar for New Zealand Teachers to Yad Vashem.
Aubrey spoke eloquently about her experience of attending the seminar, what she learned about Holocaust education from her time at Yad Vashem, and the benefits of the Centre’s expansion into the North for Holocaust education.
[PHOTOS: Left, Aubrey Mason. Right, Deb Hart.]
She told us that her Yad Vashem experience taught the power of having a dedicated teaching and learning space for teachers and students.
The Holocaust Centre of New Zealand is a vital resource. The rise of antisemitism the world over means a one centre approach must change. Multiple centres creates a ‘strong coalition of support’.
Teaching and learning about the Holocaust requires safe spaces for staff and students to learn, to question, especially in the current climate where some teachers are experiencing push back from curriculum leaders and their school community about the validity of teaching about the Holocaust.
Aubrey spoke of the importance of laying down the wero (challenge): “A country is not just what it does – it is also what it tolerates,” wrote the German essayist of Jewish origin, Kurt Tucholsky about the silence of the majority of Germans.
“Let us not be silent. Let us help students see the universal trends in human behaviour that paved the road for the Holocaust to occur. Let us help them see those trends both overseas and here in New Zealand, so that Never Again is Now.”
Thank you Aubrey for your powerful words and your dedication to Holocaust education.
