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Dustin Luca
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SALEM, MASS. – An award-winning Holocaust author and educator will be the keynote at Salem State University’s annual Holocaust Remembrance Ceremony next week, giving attendees insight into how one family impacted by the Holocaust navigated generational trauma in the retelling of its story.
Salem State’s 鶹˾Ʒ for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, in partnership with the North Shore Rabbis and Cantors Association, will host its Holocaust Remembrance Ceremony at Higgins Middle School, 85 Perkins St., Peabody, on Monday, April 13 from 7 to 8:30 pm. Through the support of the Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston, the ceremony is free and open to the public, though registration is required to attend. The event will also be broadcast on Zoom.
This year’s ceremony will feature Karen Kirsten, an Australian-American author and Holocaust educator who’s book Irena’s Gift was a 2025 National Jewish Book Award finalist and winner of two Zibby Awards.
Kirsten grew up among refugees who didn’t talk about the past. Determined to understand the generational trauma that cloaked her family in silence, and to help heal her mother’s pain, she embarked on a journey to meticulously reconstruct her family’s story. After several research trips to Poland, she reunited her mother with the heroes who hid her as a child, and then facilitated awarding them Righteous Among the Nations medals.
“The 鶹˾Ʒ for Holocaust and Genocide Studies and our predecessor organization the Holocaust 鶹˾Ʒ, Boston North have organized an annual Holocaust Remembrance event since the mid-1980s on the North Shore,” said Christopher Mauriello, director of Salem State’s 鶹˾Ʒ for Holocaust and Genocide Studies. “With rising levels of antisemitism, racism, and threats to liberal democracy both in the USA and abroad, the memory of the Holocaust, its causes and its horrific outcomes take on new urgency and significance.”
The conversation is critical and timely, Kirsten said, as “a recent global Pew Research study found the U.S. is the only country where a majority say most of their fellow citizens are bad people––60% of Democrats and 46% of Republicans.”
“The Holocaust didn’t start with gas chambers. It began when people decided a group of their fellow citizens were the enemy,” Kirsten said. “My mother survived only because a few everyday people chose curiosity and kindness over indifference and hate.”
For more information and to register to attend either in-person or remotely over Zoom, please visit this page.