By Pam Kancher, executive director, Holocaust Memorial Resource and Education Center of Florida
We recently presented the drama Upstanders at our Kristallnacht commemoration for a standing-room only crowd. Written by the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, University of Minnesota, Upstanders features the stories of a few famous activists like Senator William Proxmire and Oskar Schindler. For the most part however, the focus is on ordinary people – journalists, missionaries, hotel managers and students – who made difficult choices and became actively involved in challenging evil in the face of genocide and ethnic hatred. Presenting the inspiring stories of Taner Akçam, Irena Sendler, and Dith Pran through first person narrative enabled our center to convey the valuable lesson of not being bystanders in life.
People often think of a Holocaust center as a place concerned only about preserving history. Nothing could be further from the truth. Changing hearts and minds is at the core of our mission. We examine the past in order to learn from it, and to help people become alert to contemporary threats to freedom, civil rights and human lives – not just in our own backyard but everywhere in the world where human suffering exists. The Upstanders illustrated these lessons with passion and compassion.
Elie Wiesel, Holocaust survivor, author, scholar, speaker, and humanitarian, said: “I’ve gone everywhere, trying to stop many atrocities: Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia. The least I can do is show the victims that they are not alone. When I went to Cambodia, journalists asked me, ‘What are you doing here? This is not a Jewish tragedy.’ I answered, ‘When I needed people to come, they didn’t. That’s why I am here.”
As Elie Wiesel and the Upstanders writers so eloquently remind us, we must not be bystanders in life. We must speak and act for those who have no voice.
Editor’s note:
Upstanders is available online and free of charge at
www.chgs.umn.edu/pdf/upstandersScript.pdf.
www.chgs.umn.edu/pdf/upstanders.ppt
It can be done on a bare stage and can be adapted and used by schools, faith organizations, civic groups, and others to teach about genocide and to inspire ordinary people to take a stand against injustice.
It has been used by the Maryland Multicultural and Achievement Network, a group that represents all 24 Maryland school districts to address prejudice and discrimination; and by the Board of the Maryland Multicultural Coalition, which shares resources and programs with educators across the state.
