Holocaust Memorial Programming

Week Long Exhibits

  • Liberation footage will be shown on a loop March 24-27, 2025 from 3:30 PM-7:00 PM, Lee Campus A-105.

    • **Viewer discretion is advised. Footage contains graphic images which may be upsetting to some viewers.**
  • A WWII era boxcar will be on loan from the Holocaust Museum and Cohen Education Center of Naples. Viewing will be open to the public March 24-28, 2025 from 9:00 AM-5:00 PM in lot 8 outside of the O & P buildings.

Monday, March 24

  • 1:30 PM Steen Metz, Survivor talk and Q&A Lee Campus, AA-177 & Live Stream
  • 3:00 PM Professor Sara Gottwalles presents “The Fighting Spirit: An exploration into the stories of three local survivors liberated from camps.” Lee Campus, AA-177
  • 6:00 PM Dr. Paul Bartrop, Professor Emeritus of History and former Director of the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Research at Florida Gulf Coast University, Fort Myers, Fl.: "This was not how I intended it!" Liberation and Reflections by Survivors on the Nazi Concentration Camps.” Lee Campus, J-103

Tuesday, March 25

  • 12:00 PM Dr. Mark Herman presents “Victory or Liberation: A Choice of Strategies” Lee Campus, AA-177
  • 3:00 PM Dr. Sandi Towers-Romero presents “Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Resurgence of a Genocide” Lee Campus, AA-177
  • 6:00 PM Dr. Sandi Towers-Romero presents “Auschwitz Birkenau: Then and Now” Lee Campus, AA-177 & Live Stream

Wednesday, March 26

  • 12:00 PM Frank Kohn, MA, LMHC, CCMHC presents “Psychological Aspects of the Holocaust” Lee Campus, AA-177
  • 1:00 PM Musical Presentation, Heroes of the Holocaust, performed by Professor Rachel Cox on violin and Professor Mary Seal on piano. Lee Campus, J-103
  • 3:00 PM Sam Varsano presents “The Holocaust in Salonica” Lee Campus, AA-177 & Live Stream
  • 6:00 PM Second Generation Round Table, presented by Sol Awend, Dr. Stuart Mest, and Richard Stein Lee Campus, AA-177

Thursday, March 27

Mission

The mission of the Dr. Talbot Spivak Holocaust Memorial Week at Florida SouthWestern State College is to educate students and the community about the Holocaust, to honor its victims and survivors, to cultivate tolerance, and to promote awareness of modern-day genocide in support of the world's promise of "Never Again."

About the Holocaust

The Holocaust, also called the Shoah, was the genocide of approximately six million European Jews between 1933 and 1945 by the Nazi regime in Germany. The Nazis also systematically persecuted and murdered approximately five million Roma (Gypsies), people of Slavic descent, religious and political dissidents, homosexual Germans, and Germans with mental and physical disabilities.

To learn more about the Holocaust, read Introduction to the Holocaust, provided by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Field of Flags

What is the purpose for the field of flags each year to begin the Dr. Talbot Spivak Holocaust Memorial Week?

It is estimated that 11 Million people (6,000,000 Jewish victims; 5,000,000 non-Jewish victims) were systematically persecuted and murdered by the Nazi regime. Every year to begin Holocaust Memorial Week students of FSW place out 1,100 flags on the Thomas Edison (Lee) Campus in front of the Madeleine R. Taeni Student Services Hall. Each flag represents 10,000 Holocaust victims, this is to give a small scale view of the enormous amount of victims who suffered and perished.