{"id":176499,"date":"2021-04-08T09:58:18","date_gmt":"2021-04-08T13:58:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=176499"},"modified":"2021-09-21T15:54:40","modified_gmt":"2021-09-21T19:54:40","slug":"message-from-the-hri-and-dodd-impact-directors-yom-hashoah-and-antisemitism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2021\/04\/message-from-the-hri-and-dodd-impact-directors-yom-hashoah-and-antisemitism\/","title":{"rendered":"Message from the HRI and Dodd Impact Directors: Yom Hashoah and Antisemitism"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today, we join many around the world in commemorating Yom Hashoah\u2014Holocaust Remembrance Day\u2014in honor and memory of the six million Jews who perished as a result of Nazi crimes during World War II.\u00a0 With the\u00a0recent antisemitic attacks on our campus<\/a>, this occasion is made all the more somber for us here at UConn.\u00a0 We stand in solidarity with Jewish students, faculty, and staff in condemning these vile acts, and support the calls to action of the\u00a0Center for Judaic Studies and Contemporary Jewish Life<\/a>\u00a0to create \u201ca campus community where all feel welcome, safe, and secure,\u00a0and where students, faculty, and staff of all backgrounds, faiths, and places of national origin are celebrated.\u201c<\/p>\n

In these attacks, Jewish members of our community were targeted with symbols of Nazi hate\u2014the swastika and \u201cSS\u201d mark\u2014symbols that we are all too familiar with at Dodd Human Rights Impact.\u00a0 Seventy-five years ago today, Thomas Dodd and his fellow prosecutors at Nuremberg were engaged in the epic work of exposing the depth of Nazi crimes and holding the perpetrators to account.\u00a0\u00a0Documents<\/a>\u00a0in the Dodd Papers, held in the UConn Library\u2019s Archives and Special Collections, attest in horrific detail to the central role of the SS–or Schutzstaffel<\/em>, Hitler\u2019s most vicious and committed troops\u2014in conceiving and executing the Holocaust.\u00a0 As one survivor of the SS-run concentration camps wrote<\/a>, \u201cthe way of the swastika led directly to the glowing ovens of Auschwitz.\u201d<\/p>\n

The pain, fear, and anger these hateful acts have generated among the Jewish community must be understood in the context of the long and vicious history of antisemitism, of which the Holocaust was its most depraved expression, and of the global resurgence of antisemitism, authoritarianism, and white supremacy.\u00a0 Yom Hashoah calls on all of us to remember.\u00a0 Yom Hashoah also calls on us to recommit and to act against antisemitism, hate, and bigotry wherever it manifests itself, but especially when it appears in our community.\u00a0 We at the Human Rights Institute and Dodd Impact recognize this responsibility and will work in partnership to help build a more just and loving UConn.<\/p>\n

Another survivor of the concentration camps, Elie Wiesel,\u00a0said at the 1995 dedication of the Dodd Center<\/a>:<\/p>\n

So what do we do today to the memory of Nuremberg?\u00a0 We learn, we teach, in other words, we share.\u00a0 In other words still, we believe that that memory must open a channel to human rights. Why human rights? Because we realize that when a people is threatened, it doesn\u2019t remain threatened alone.\u00a0 When a group is singled out, it affects all other groups.\u00a0 When I speak of the tragedy of the Jewish people, a unique tragedy, I never fail to say that it has universal implications.<\/em><\/p>\n

Glenn Mitoma
\nDirector, Dodd Human Rights Impact<\/p>\n

Kathy Libal
\nDirector, Human Rights Institute<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today, we join many around the world in commemorating Yom Hashoah\u2014Holocaust Remembrance Day\u2014in honor and memory of the six million Jews who perished as a result of Nazi crimes during World War II.\u00a0 With the\u00a0recent antisemitic attacks on our campus, this occasion is made all the more somber for us here at UConn.\u00a0 We stand […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":152,"featured_media":176501,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2318,2312],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[2319],"class_list":["post-176499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dodd-impact","category-hri","attribution-dodd-impact","attribution-human-rights"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-20 09:45:27","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/152"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=176499"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176499\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":179158,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176499\/revisions\/179158"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/176501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176499"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=176499"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=176499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}