The Center Online: A Jewish Child Survivor of the Holocaust Gives Testimony
Monday, July 27, 2020
7 p.m.
Online Zoom-based event
This talk is free and open to the public.
Dr. Miriam Klein Kassenoff, Holocaust child survivor, will speak with Dr. Thomas Pegelow Kaplan, professor and director of the Center for Judaic, Holocaust and Peace Studies at Appalachian State University, in an Zoom-based online symposium. Due to COVID-19, Klein Kassenoff’s testimony has been altered from this year's in-person summer symposium to be conducted in an online format.
Klein Kassenoff was born in Košice, present-day Slovakia. After her father managed to escape from a concentration camp run by Hungary, a Nazi ally, she and her family, including both of her parents and younger brother, embarked on a dangerous seven-month long escape through seven European countries. In 1941, they managed to reach Lisbon and catch a ship to the U.S.
A graphic that shows the escape route that Klein Kassenoff took with her family in 1941. Graphic provided by the Center for Judaic, Holocaust and Peace Studies
Today, Klein Kassenoff serves as the Director of the Holocaust Teachers Institute at the University of Miami. The Center for Judaic, Holocaust and Peace Studies at Appalachian State University has been long affiliated with Klein Kassenoff, who helped start the Martin and Doris Rosen Summer Symposium for teachers almost two decades ago.
To get the link for the Zoom meeting, instructions on how to install Zoom on a computer or smart phone and more information about the event, please contact the Center for Judaic, Holocaust and Peace Studies at 828.262.2311 or holocaust@appstate.edu.
A picture of Klein Kassenoff and her family. Photo provided.
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About the Center for Judaic, Holocaust and Peace Studies
Appalachian State University’s Center for Judaic, Holocaust, and Peace Studies was founded in 2002 to develop new educational opportunities for students, teachers and the community. Located administratively within the College of Arts and Sciences, the center seeks to strengthen tolerance, understanding and remembrance by increasing the knowledge of Jewish culture and history, teaching the history and meaning of the Holocaust, and utilizing these experiences to explore peaceful avenues for human improvement and the prevention of further genocides. The Center for Judaic, Holocaust, and Peace Studies is an associate institutional member of the Association of Jewish Studies, a member of the Association of Holocaust Organizations and a member of the North Carolina Consortium of Jewish Studies.
About the College of Arts and Sciences
The College of Arts and Sciences is home to 16 academic departments, one stand-alone academic program, two centers and one residential college. These units span the humanities and the social, mathematical and natural sciences. The College of Arts and Sciences aims to develop a distinctive identity built upon our university's strengths, traditions and unique location. The college’s values lie not only in service to the university and local community, but through inspiring, training, educating and sustaining the development of its students as global citizens. There are approximately 6,100 student majors in the college. As the college is also largely responsible for implementing Appalachian's general education curriculum, it is heavily involved in the education of all students at the university, including those pursuing majors in other colleges. Learn more at https://cas.appstate.edu.
By Barclay Ann Blankenship
June 26, 2018
BOONE, N.C.
The Center Online: A Jewish Child Survivor of the Holocaust Gives Testimony Monday, July 27, 2020
Picture of Dr. Miriam Klein Kassenoff as a child before her family’s escape through Europe. Photo provided.