Holocaust & Genocide Awareness Week 2025
JANUARY 23 – 30
Presented by Hillel at FIU, the Holocaust & Genocide Studies Program, and the Jewish Museum of Florida-FIU
Please join Hillel at FIU, the Holocaust & Genocide Studies Program, the Jewish Museum of Florida-FIU, and our many co-sponsors for FIU’s 10th Annual Holocaust & Genocide Awareness Week (HGAW), a series of on- and off-campus in-person and online events that will raise awareness about these darkest moments in history. In this era of heightened antisemitism, HGAW will engage our community with a range of perspectives on genocide and mass violence and will culminate in a campus-wide observance of International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Multiple campus-specific locations are listed below. To locate campus buildings, please use the FIU Interactive Map.
This schedule is being actively updated. Please check back for additional information.
- Thursday, January 23
Uighur Genocide and Cultural Memory
Political geographer Dr. Tamar Mayer presents her research on the mistreatment of the Muslim ethnic group in China's Xinjiang region.
Co-sponsored by the David Posnack JCC
12:30 PM – 1:45 PM in the Green School International Pavilion (SIPA II, Room 102)
Tamar Mayer is the Robert R. Churchill Professor Emerita of Geosciences at Middlebury College and a Visiting Research Scholar at Brandeis University’s Research Consortium on Antisemitism. Formerly she was the director of the Rohatyn Center for Global Affairs. In 2023, the Tamar Mayer Professorship in Geography was endowed in her honor. Dr. Mayer’s research explores the intersections of nationalism, landscape, and memory of stateless nations.
- Friday, January 24
Remembrance Shabbat
Jewish and non-Jewish friends and allies unite for a special Shabbat dinner to discuss standing tall in the face of rising antisemitism.
6:30 PM - 9 PM in the Graham Center
- Saturday, January 25
Havdalah Across Miami
Join 3G Miami and Hillel at FIU as we close Shabbat together, welcoming third and fourth generation Holocaust survivors to tell their family story.
7:00 PM at two locations:
Dave and Mary Alper Jewish Community Center, 11155 SW 112th Ave, Miami, FL 33176
Miami Beach JCC, 4221 Pine Tree Dr, Miami Beach, FL 33140 - Sunday, January 26
The Garden of the Finzi-Continis: A Jewish Drama in Fascist Italy
The Jewish Museum of Florida-FIU will host a showing of the Garden of the Finzi-Continis, with English captioning. The film follows the lives of an aristocratic Jewish family under the Mussolini regime and connects to the artwork of Eric Finzi, currently on exhibit at the museum. The screening will be preceded by a performance by FIU’s Amernet Quartet.
Co-sponsored by The Jewish Museum of Florida-FIU, The Holocaust Memorial Miami Beach, and Miami Beach Urban Studios
12:00 PM at The Jewish Museum of Florida-FIU, 301 Washington Avenue, Miami Beach, FL 33139
- Monday, January 27
The Media and Holocaust Memory: Doing Good on the Global Stage
Join Leslie Gelrubin Benitah, U.S. producer of The Last Ones, a global independent project that honors the last survivors of the Holocaust through web series, books, podcasts, documentaries, conferences, and films, for a conversation with professor Neil Reisner marking the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp.
Co-sponsored by The Holocaust Memorial Miami Beach
11:00 AM – 12:30 PM at FIU's Biscayne Bay Campus, Glenn Hubert Library, Room 160
Activist, philanthropist, and third-generation survivor Leslie Gelrubin Benitah was born and raised in Paris and earned her PhD in Journalism from the Sorbonne. After moving to Miami, she decided to dedicate herself entirely to Holocaust education. Leslie is currently producing The Last Ones / Les Derniers, a series of short documentaries on the last Holocaust survivors. Thus far over 160 episodes have been produced in French and English, garnering several million views and tens of thousands of subscribers.
Neil Reisner, associate professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, is a veteran journalist and journalism educator with interests in the ways media covers issues of diversity, ethnicity and religion. Reisner was a daily newspaper reporter/editor for 25 years, working at the Miami Herald and the Record in Bergen County, NJ, among others, and pioneered what is now called database journalism.
Difficult Knowledge, Story by Story: Teaching about the Holocaust to Young Children
Rebecca Christ, chair of the Department of Teaching and Learning, and Elizabeth Abraham, doctoral candidate in the School of Education and Human Development, share strategies and resources to teach about the Holocaust to young children, taking into account Florida’s revised mandate as well as new state standards for Holocaust Education.
Co-sponsored by the Department of Teaching & Learning, School of Education and Human Development
6:30 PM – 7:45 PM in Wertheim Conservatory, Room 130
Rebecca C. Christ is an associate professor and Chair of the Department of Teaching and Learning at FIU. Her research interests include social studies education and teacher education—specifically focusing on genocide education. She is also interested in pedagogies of qualitative inquiry and in utilizing posthuman theoretical concepts for inspiration and innovation within qualitative inquiry and pedagogical practice.
Elizabeth Abraham is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Teaching and Learning at FIU. Her research focuses on her own experiences as a teacher and learner of genocide education, specifically connected to the Holocaust and the genocide of Indigenous people in the United States. Elizabeth also incorporates this research into her work as a 3rd grade teacher.
- Tuesday, January 28
Combating Antisemitism in the European Union: Opportunities, Tools, and Challenges
Hofstra University professor Carolyn Dudek will examine why and how the EU created a policy focusing on antisemitism and some of the policy tools the EU possesses to address it.
Co-sponsored by the Miami-Florida Jean Monnet Center of Excellence
12:30 PM – 1:45 PM in the Green School International Pavilion (SIPA II, Room 102)
Carolyn M. Dudek is Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science and Director of European Studies at Hofstra University. She has written extensively on the EU across various policy sectors. Her current work is focused on EU antidiscrimination policy with a particular focus on antisemitism. Currently the grant writer and coordinator for an ERASMUS+ Jean Monnet Module at Hofstra focused on EU anti-discrimination and hate crime policy, she was recently awarded a Jean Monnet Chair.
- Wednesday, January 29
Propaganda, Social Media, and Antisemitism: from the Nazi Era to Today
Hillel at FIU Director Jon Warech addresses propaganda in Nazi Germany and how similar tropes and misinformation exist today, diving into social media, the fast-paced news cycles, misleading headlines, and how hate spreads.
10:00 AM in Green School International Pavilion (SIPA II, Room 102)
Poland in the Holocaust / Polska w czasie Holokaustu
This event centers Poland both as a physical site where many of the atrocities of the Holocaust took place and as a site where Nazi ideology found some of its most extreme and devastating realizations.
Co-sponsored by the Center for Humanities in an Urban Environment
Click here to register via Zoom
3:00 PM via ZOOM
Historian Dariusz Stola is Professor at the Institute for Political Studies, Polish Academy of Sciences. He has authored or co-edited 10 books and published more than a hundred scholarly articles on the political and social history of Poland in the 20th century, the Holocaust, international migrations and the communist regime. In 2014-2019 he was the director of the Polin Museum of the History of Polish Jews.
Jan Grabowski is Professor of History at University of Ottawa, where he specializes in Jewish-Polish relations during German-occupied Poland during World War II and the Holocaust. He has written more than 14 monographs and 60 articles. His book Hunt for Jews: Betrayal and Murder in German-Occupied Poland (2014) was awarded the Yad Vashem International Book Prize in 2014.
Jacek J. Kolasiński is the founding Director of the Ratcliffe Incubator of Art + Design in the FIU College of Communication, Architecture + The Arts and is a professor and former Department Chair of the Art + Art History Department at Florida International University. Kolasiński’s artwork and curatorial projects have reached large international audiences through presentations and exhibitions in numerous venues on several continents.
Antonina Konopelska is an Interdisciplinary artist and Assistant Professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, where she is Head of the Artistic Practices Department. She is also Lecturer at Warsaw’s Polish-Japanese Academy of Information Technology. She works primarily with staged or provoked camera situations and new media art based on personal experiences or documentary research. She is the Recipient of Młoda Polska (Young Poland) scholarship (2023).
- Thursday, January 30
10th Annual Holocaust Commemoration Ceremony
Join the FIU community for this meaningful and moving annual ceremony, featuring a tribute to the late Holocaust Survivor Tibor Hollo.
Co-sponsored by the Steven J. Green School of International & Public Affairs and the Honors College
2:00 PM – 3:15 PM in the MARC Pavilion
