Forum "Educating to Remember": a space for dialogue and reflection on the Holocaust

The Global Embassy of Activists for Peace (GEAP) developed the University Forum "Educating to Remember" at the University of Development, Santiago de Chile (UDD), with the objective of strengthening the reflection and practice of respect for universal rights.

The main audience of the Faculty of Government, Political Science and Public Policy of the UDD brought together more than 100 people (teachers, students, special guests), including children, grandchildren and the great-grandson of Auschwitz survivor Judith Klein .

The dean of the Faculty of Government of the UDD, Eugenio Guzmán, was in charge of the opening words, and during his speech quoted excerpts from the German book of Hannah Arendt, to reinforce the importance of remembering.

Guzman said that events like the Holocaust cannot be just an event, but must generate spaces for dialogue that will allow us to acquire teachings so that events like this will not happen again.

Educating for Peace

The media liaison director of the Silva Henríquez Catholic University, Juan Henríquez Peñailillo, spoke on "Legislation on discrimination and human rights as fundamental axes to prevent genocides, elements of preparation for unsolicited or unwanted futures".

Silva in his address said:

"Genocide destroys the way people treat one another, which is why in the formation of future human beings we can make changes, by educating for peace."

Miguel Poblete, teacher in Higher Education and professional of the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights, generated a space for reflection under the theme "Universal Lessons left by the Holocaust".

Poblete emphasized the leading role of education and cited the writer Fernando Savater, who said:

"Education has to have humanization as its main objective". He also pointed out that one of the greatest problems in the world when this genocide happened was indifference.

To conclude with his participation he narrated the poem of Friedrich Gustav Emil Martin Niemöller "They came".

Thanks to life

During the event, survivor Judith Klein was honored through the project "Traces to Remember”, with a plaque that contained her palm prints and that of her offspring.

The plaque is accompanied by a slide that presents a text with a brief description of what happened in the Holocaust and an account of its history.

This act is carried out with the purpose of keeping alive the testimony of the survivors of the Holocaust, and as a way to prevent the repetition of one of the most sinister chapters of human history.

With the theme "Gracias a la Vida" by Violeta Parra, interpreted in Spanish and Hebrew by the activist María José Salamanca, the homage for the Holocaust survivor ended.

The university forum culminated with a tour of the photographic exhibition that showed the events that occurred in World War II.