In cooperation with the Greater Lafayette Holocaust Remembrance Committee and TELL, the James F. Ackerman Center will sponsor a half-day Holocaust Remembrance Program for area students and teachers at Purdue University.

The 1999 program is entitled: Conflicts and Responsibilities: Current Lessons from the Holocaust.

The Ackerman Center will host a half-day program of stories and speeches by and about survivors and heroes in this tragic historical era.

This year's program will feature presentations by Johanna Reiss, Charlotte G. Opfermann and David Adler.

Johanna Reiss was born in the Netherlands and during World War II from ten to thirteen years of age, she was hidden by a Gentile family.  The Upstairs Room which shares the story of Ms. Reiss's years in hiding was published in 1972 and won the Newbery Honor Medal.  In 1976, Johanna Reiss wrote The Journey Back which describes her experiences when she was "free again."  Ms. Reiss has won other awards for her writing including: American Library Association's Notable Children's Book, Jane Addams Peace Association Honor Book, Jewish Book Council Juvenile Book Award and the Buxtehuder Bulle (Germany).

Ms. Reiss's trip to the Purdue campus and participation in the Greater Lafayette Holocaust Remembrance conference  is being sponsored by the James F. Ackerman Center for Democratic Citizenship. While she is in the area, Ms. Reiss will also spend time with school children at a local middle school.

Charlotte G. Opfermann was born in Wiesbaden, Germany.  Ms. Opfermann, at seventeen years of age, was arrested and deported along with her family and sent to the Theresienstadt Ghetto as a prisoner of the Nazis.  Ms. Opfermann's father and brother were sent to Auschwitz where her father was killed.  Her brother was sent to other camps and finally was killed at the Mauthausen camp in the spring of 1945, just weeks before the US Third Army liberated it.  Charlotte Opfermann lost most of her family and struggled through hard labor and many illnesses to survive Theresienstadt and Ms. Opfermann shares her experiences with others so that people who were not there to witness will nevertheless know the history.

David Adler, author of We Remember the Holocaust, The Number on My Grandfather's Arm,  Child of the Warsaw Ghetto, One Yellow Daffodil, will be conversing with some of the participating school children via a conference call about his writing and his ideas about history.  Adler is also known for his picture book biographies featuring: Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, Helen Keller, Eleanor Roosevelt, Simon Bolivar, Florence Nightingale, Jesse Owens, Sitting Bull, Anne Frank, Amelia Earhart, Thurgood Marshall, Louis Braille, and many others.
 
 

The program for students will be on Friday, April 16th, 1999 from 9:00am-12:00noon.  Contact the Ackerman Center for details about the Teacher Enrichment program and further details about the children's program.