Students, Faculty Honor Holocaust Victims

Undaunted by yesterday's heavy rains and chilling winds, 96 students and faculty members each spent five minutes at a makeshift podium on the steps of Widener Library reading aloud the names of victims of the Holocaust.

The recitation of names was one of many commemorative efforts occurring across the world yesterday for Holocaust Remembrance Day, according to co-coordinator of the event Michael A. Kay '01.

When Israel was formed in 1948, the new government established this day to memorialize the six million Jews killed in the Holocaust.

Organizers from Hillel predicted that participants--who included Dean of Students Archie C. Epps III, Provost Harvey V. Fineberg '67 and Adams House Master Robert J. Kiely--recited several thousand names in the course of the eight-hour event.

Kay said the process of reading names individually helped ensure continued contemplation and remembrance of the Holocaust's atrocities.

"This is a way to personalize the tragedy," Kay said. "It's easy to just say that six million people died, but when you say each name, [the Holocaust] becomes a lot more significant."

Though Kay acknowledged that a majority of the participants were Jewish students, he and co-coordinator Michal Engelman '01 said they were nonetheless heartened by the number of non-Jewish people who signed up to read names.

"We specifically made a point to include a lot of [other religious and ethnic] groups," Engelman said. "The prejudice, oppression and persecution of the Holocaust are themes that, sadly, are familiar to many people."

Among other groups, representatives from the Black Students Association (BSA), the Arab Students Alliance and the Harvard-Radcliffe Christian Fellowship (HRCF) agreed to participate in the reading, Kay said.

Standing under umbrellas and speaking into a microphone wrapped in plastic, the participants battled heavy rain and wind to read in five-minute shifts from a book listing 19,000 Holocaust victims. According to Kay, it takes about five years for participants to read through all of the names.

For Andrew H. Crouch, a campus minister who works with HRCF, reading Holocaust victims' names yesterday for the first time was an "overwhelming" experience.

But Crouch said presenting the reality of the Holocaust to students is an important goal.

"At this...wonderful institution, it seems important once and a while to be confronted with the reality of evil," he said.

While reading, Crouch said he was concerned that he may have mispronounced some victims' names.

"Each of those names was a person who, when they were alive, liked to hear their names pronounced correctly," Crouch said.

According to Tawney B. Pearson '01, arts and entertainment chair of the BSA, taking part in the event was an opportunity to help prevent the Holocaust from ever reoccurring.

"It's important that we remember those who died in the Holocaust so that it doesn't happen again," Pearson said.

Similarly, after his reading at 4:15, Epps said he hoped to stress the significance of remembering the Holocaust.

"It's very important to acknowledge this tragedy, lest we forget," he said. "And I want to underscore that it should never happen again."

A theme among those people who read names was realization of how many families were exterminated in the Holocaust.

"To have eight Marcuses in a row often evokes more pain than the abstract term of six million [deaths]," said Bernie Steinberg, executive director of Hillel.

According to Engelman, the magnitude of the atrocity underscored the importance of continuing the reading, despite the inclement weather.

"Six million Jews died [in the Holocaust] and the least we can do is stand in the rain for eight hours," she said. "We always say never again, but the only way to do that is to make sure we don't become desensitized."