Stockton to unveil South Jersey Holocaust survivors archive | Education

President Joe Biden landed in Israel Wednesday to kick off his whirlwind four-day trip to the Middle East, his first to the region since taking office. Biden opened the visit with a tour and briefing on Israel’s “Iron Dome” and new “Iron Beam” advanced missile-defense systems, developed in partnership with the US He then laid a wreath at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem on the stone crypt containing the ashes of Holocaust victims. With tears in his eyes, Biden greeted two Holocaust survivor and engaged them in conversation. Biden is spending two days in Jerusalem for talks with Israeli leaders before meeting Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Friday in the West Bank. He then heads to Saudi Arabia.

GALLOWAY TOWNSHIP — Stockton University will unveil its Holocaust Survivors of South Jersey Digital Archive on Sunday.

The archive and associated website will document the names and stories of more than 1,500 Holocaust survivors in Atlantic, Cape May and Cumberland counties.

Stockton Associate Professor of History Michael Hayse began working on the project in 2019 and said he was awed by how the project has grown over the past three years.

“I thought there might be a few hundred, but the number of names just grew and grew,” Hayse said in a university news release issued Tuesday. “We were quickly in the hundreds, and it was clear we were going to go into the thousands.”

The creation of the archives is a project from the Sara & Sam Schoffer Holocaust Resource Center at Stockton. The digital archive housed inside the Schoffer center will include ancestry information, copies of memoirs and other documents that survivors and their families can access. The website will include the individual profiles of 50 to 75 survivors.

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The Schoffer center is scheduled to officially launch the project at 12:30 p.m. Sunday in the event room of the Stockton Campus Center, with a buffet lunch provided.

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Hayse described how researchers continued to learn more and find new avenues of study to explore, such as the relationships between different survivors and their families. He noted that with “every interview it seemed like we had more to do.”

Hundreds of students have worked on the project to expand the list of survivors to its current size. In April, then Stockton senior George Quinn launched a website documenting businesses owned and operated by South Jersey Holocaust survivors.

“(The archive) is both a project that aims to document the stories of Holocaust survivors for historical purposes, but it’s also a way to engage students in the documentation of history, the telling of historical narratives and get them to understand hands-on research ,” Hayse said.

Regular updates will be made to both the archive and website as new survivor profiles are complied and as new projects are pursued. The Schoffer center is set to release a digital exhibition in fall 2023 that will provide a comprehensive overview of the Holocaust, issues facing refugees and the contributions that Holocaust survivors have made to South Jersey. Earlier this year, Stockton hosted an exhibit created by the United Nations Archive of Global Communications and the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research that explored the lives of people who were displaced by the Holocaust.

“It will never really be done because there are always going to be stories to tell,” Hayse said of the planned updates to the archive. “We are constantly getting more information and new people coming forward to talk to us.”

Hayse said he was hoping Sunday’s gathering would connect families of Holocaust survivors so they could learn more about their experiences.

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“We have seen many people, second-generation survivors, who grew up in this area and many of them haven’t seen each other in a long time,” Hayse said. “Most of their children have been interested in the history of their Holocaust survivor family, and now this is a way for the second and third generations after the Holocaust to learn more about the stories of their parents and other family members before, during and after World War II.”

He noted that with survivors aging, preserving this history was especially important.

“If we don’t get these stories now, they could be lost,” Hayse said.

Those interested in attending are required to RSVP to Schoffer Holocaust Resource Center Director Gail Rosenthal at [email protected] or 609-652-4699.

Contact Chris Doyle

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