Educators to discuss Holocaust during forum

NORMAN Holocaust educators and human rights specialists will be featured speakers at a community forum 7 p.m. Monday in the Municipal Building council chambers, 201 W Gray St.

"The Holocaust: How Did It Happen? Could It Happen Again? is being sponsored by the Norman Human Rights Commission in conjunction with the Oklahoma Holocaust Remembrance Exhibition in Oklahoma City.

The traveling exhibit from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is at Untitled [ArtSpace], 1 NE 3 through Oct. 23.

Norman's forum will include a discussion of the exhibit but will focus more on the Holocaust event and the possibility of it happening again, organizers said.

Guest panelists will be Holocaust educators Gary Opper and Michael Korenblit, attorney Richard Ogden and University of Oklahoma professor George Henderson.

Opper is the director of the combined religious education and youth group programs of Temple B'nai Israel and Emanuel Synagogue in Oklahoma City. Opper has lectured about different aspects of the Holocaust to students from grades 5 through 12 and has participated in two educator conferences at Washington's Holocaust memorial museum.

Korenblit is an author-educator and the president and co-founder of the Respect Diversity Foundation created in Oklahoma to teach respect and tolerance for all people. Before moving back to Oklahoma, Korenblit worked 19 years for the Close Up Foundation, an educational organization in Washington.

Korenblit is co-author of "Until We Meet Again, a true story of love and survival in the Holocaust.

A 1989 graduate of the OU College of Law, Ogden is on the board of directors of the Cimarron Alliance Foundation, an Oklahoma human rights organization.

The Cimarron Alliance Foundation is one of the sponsors of the traveling exhibit.

Henderson is a civil rights scholar and lecturer who has authored or co-authored 30 books and 50 articles dealing with human rights. Henderson developed the Human Relations Program at OU and is former dean of the College of Liberal Studies.

The traveling exhibit in Oklahoma City features "Nazi Persecution of Homosexuals 1933-1945, which examines police terror that led to the arrest of more than 100,000 men under a broadly interpreted law against homosexuality.

The remembrance also includes the exhibit "Rescuers: Portraits of Moral Courage in the Holocaust, featuring portraits by Gay Block and narratives by Malka Drucker of people who helped save Jews during World War II.

For more information on the exhibit, go to www.OKHolocaustexhibition.org.

Archive ID: 2704084