• Reminder: "Center of the Storm" to be held this Monday
• United Nations Declares International Holocaust Remembrance Day
• Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors Speak Up about Darfur on December 8th

Reminder: "Center of the Storm" to be held this Monday

This is a reminder that on Monday, December 5th, from 4:30 - 6:30 p.m., JSPAN will be holding a MEMBERS ONLY event entitled "Center of the Storm: An insider's look at the Intelligent Design case," featuring the lawyers who litigated the "intelligent design" case Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District. The program will be hosted over wine and cheese at the home of Jerry Kaplan.

135 South 18th Street
Apartment 801
On Rittenhouse Square, Philadelphia

Advance reservations are required. In order to RSVP for the event, please email jspan@jspan.org or call by phone (215) 635-2554.

If you are not a JSPAN member, you can still attend if you join now through the JSPAN web site or at the meeting.

United Nations Declares International Holocaust Remembrance Day

UNITED NATIONS SETS JANUARY 27th AS ANNUAL HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE DAY           We, the peoples of the United Nations, determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal right of men and women and of nations large and small . . .
          And for these ends to practice tolerance and live together in peace with one another as good neighbors . . .
          Have resolved to combine these efforts to accomplish our aims.

Charter of the United Nations
[June 1945], preamble Three generations after being established in the wake of the Shoah, as the voices of the last surviving witnesses to the Final Solution begin to fade, on November 1, 2005, the United Nations adopted a resolution designating January 27th, the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp, as an annual day to commemorate victims of the Holocaust, reject denials of the genocide, and promote public education about that which we have solemnly vowed never to forget. The resolution was initiated by Australia, Canada, Israel, Russia, and the United States, was supported by 104 co-sponsors, and was adopted with no vote by consensus among the 191 members of the General Assembly.

To read more about the U.N. resolution, you can visit the following web sites:

UN News Centre - General Assembly designated International Holocaust Remembrance Day
Jerusalem Post - UN Adopts Int'l Holocaust Day (Nov. 1, 2005)

To learn more about the Holocaust, we encourage you and your friends and relatives to visit the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum or its web site www.ushmm.org, visit Yad Vashem or its web site www.yadvashem.org, contact the Pennsylvania Holocaust Education Council or visit its web site www.phec.org, visit other memorials here and abroad, and reach out to other centers of learning about the Shoah.

To live up to our people's promise of "Never Again," we implore you to get involved. "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men [and women] to do nothing." [FN]

[FN] Attributed in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (14th ed.), p. 454b, to Edmund Burke, Letter to William Smith [January 9, 1795]. Many is the source to dispute the attribution.

Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors Speak Up about Darfur on December 8th

It has taken the United Nations sixty years to designate January 27th, the date of the liberation of the Auschwitz Nazi Death Camp, as an annual commemoration of the the Holocaust. Will it take another fifty years for the United Nations to commemorate the genocide that took place in Ruwanda a decade ago? Will it take the United Nations sixty years to commemorate the genocide now taking place in Darfur? Can we sit idly by today and remain silent in the face of the ongoing genocide in Africa and still remain faithful to our solemn vow of "Never Again"? Can we become passive participants in the mass murder of hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women, and children taking place today in Sudan and continue to wonder how it was that the whole world stood by as the ovens burned at Auschwitz?

We encourage you to attend a panel discussion to raise awareness of the situation in Darfur being presented by Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors on December 8, 2005, at Old York Road Temple Beth Am in Abington, Pennsylvania. For more information, please visit the web site: www.cjhsa.org/ns/content/event.cfm?pass=10.

We also encourage you to contact the Pennsylvania Holocaust Education Council or visit its web site www.phec.org. The Pennsylvania Holocaust Education Council is a state-wide organization comprised of volunteer educators, liberators, theologians, survivors, and children of survivors. It is funded by the Pennsylvania Department of Education. The Council is committed to educating teachers about the Holocaust and its connections to contemporary issues. It advocates expanding teacher knowledge of the history and events of the Holocaust and provides supportive resources for the development of curricula. For the past twenty years, the Council has presented training workshops to hundreds of teachers throughout Pennsylvania. At its Holocaust Conference held this past November 3rd, the Council provided teachers with foundations for understanding the Holocaust and the connections between the Holocaust and the genocide now taking place in Darfur.

Now, more than ever, we can actualize the true significance of the United Nations Resolution commemorating the Holocaust by supporting educators who are committed to teaching the history and events of the Holocaust and translating the inherent messages of the Shoah into universal lessons that transcend divisions based on race, religion, or ethnic background.

"Never Again" means standing up in the face of new attempts at genocide, not standing by in silence.