(North Bergen, NJ—April
23, 2015) Fran Malkin, Holocaust survivor and Board of Associates member of the
Center for Holocaust/Genocide Study at Drew University, spoke to High Tech
students as part of the Facing History
and Ourselves grant awarded to History teacher Jamie Velazquez and Language
Arts instructor Kerri Ann Murphy, announced Dr. Joseph Giammarella, Principal
of High Tech High School.
In
addition to the Facing History and
Ourselves grant, the Hudson County Schools of Technology (HCST) Foundation generously
commissioned Malkin’s appearance at High Tech.
She spoke to students in the class “People Make Choices. Choices Make History” co-instructed by Velazquez
and Murphy and Murphy’s freshmen World Literature classes to supplement their knowledge
of the Holocaust after they read Elie Weisel's book Night.
Malkin
screened excerpts from the documentary No.
4 Street of Our Lady, a film documenting a Polish woman, Francesca
Halamajova, who rescued Malkin and members of her family. Approximately 6,000 Jews lived in the town of
Sokol before the start of World War II.
After the war, only 32 Jews had survived, of which Halamajova rescued 16. The excerpts focused on Malkin returning to
visit to the loft where Halamajova hid her and her family during the war. After the screening, Malkin answered
questions and spoke in more detail about her experiences, all part of Facing History and Ourselves.
Facing
History and Ourselves, a non-profit organization founded in 1976 and based in Brookline,
Massachusetts, develops educational materials on the topics of prejudices and injustice relevant to Nazi Germany and
the Holocaust.
