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Wed, Feb 08 2012
UN turns to social media to raise awareness about Holocaust
Reconstruction of the bookshelf that covered the entrance to the secret annex where Anne Frank and her family stayed in hiding to avoid persecution, in the Anne-Frank-House in Amsterdam
Photo: Erik Möller.
The United Nations launched on March 29 2010 a Twitter campaign for students in memory of Anne Frank, the Jewish teenager who died in the Holocaust 65 years ago but whose wartime diary has endured to become one of the world’s most widely read books and teaching tools, the UN News Service said.
In a joint effort with the Anne Frank Center USA, students are asked to travel back in time and write to Anne through "tweets" – which allow only 140 characters or fewer – as though she could communicate with the world in secret from her family’s hiding spot in Amsterdam.
"This exercise is meant to help young people make a meaningful connection to the Holocaust through the words of a courageous young girl," said Kimberly Mann, Manager of the Holocaust and the UN Outreach Programme in the Department of Public Information’s Outreach Division.
If young people today were isolated from the world, they would certainly be online using all forms of social media to remain in contact with each other, she said.
Students are asked, "What messages of support would you have sent Anne?" and "What would you have told Anne that you have learned from her life and experience?"
Anne and her family hid for two years in an annex of rooms above her father’s office in Amsterdam before their location was discovered. She was taken to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Nazi Germany, where she died at the age of 15.
Throughout her time in hiding, she kept a journal in which she struggled to make sense of World War 2 and why the Jewish people were being persecuted. She also shared her personal thoughts about the people she loved, her fear of death and her hopes and dreams.
"It’s a wonder I haven’t abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart," reads an excerpt from an entry dated 15 July 1944.
The Twitter campaign will run until April 11, which will mark Yom Ha Shoah, the Holocaust Remembrance Day on the Jewish calendar. The tweets will be posted online and exhibited at the Anne Frank Centre USA in New York.
Each year the Holocaust and the UN Outreach Programme organises activities and develops information materials in partnership with civil society to raise awareness of the Holocaust and its underlying causes, to help prevent genocide, the UN News Service said.
Established by a General Assembly resolution in 2006, the programme encourages young people to respect diversity and learn from the lessons of the Holocaust.
In a joint effort with the Anne Frank Center USA, students are asked to travel back in time and write to Anne through "tweets" – which allow only 140 characters or fewer – as though she could communicate with the world in secret from her family’s hiding spot in Amsterdam.
"This exercise is meant to help young people make a meaningful connection to the Holocaust through the words of a courageous young girl," said Kimberly Mann, Manager of the Holocaust and the UN Outreach Programme in the Department of Public Information’s Outreach Division.
If young people today were isolated from the world, they would certainly be online using all forms of social media to remain in contact with each other, she said.
Students are asked, "What messages of support would you have sent Anne?" and "What would you have told Anne that you have learned from her life and experience?"
Anne and her family hid for two years in an annex of rooms above her father’s office in Amsterdam before their location was discovered. She was taken to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Nazi Germany, where she died at the age of 15.
Throughout her time in hiding, she kept a journal in which she struggled to make sense of World War 2 and why the Jewish people were being persecuted. She also shared her personal thoughts about the people she loved, her fear of death and her hopes and dreams.
"It’s a wonder I haven’t abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart," reads an excerpt from an entry dated 15 July 1944.
The Twitter campaign will run until April 11, which will mark Yom Ha Shoah, the Holocaust Remembrance Day on the Jewish calendar. The tweets will be posted online and exhibited at the Anne Frank Centre USA in New York.
Each year the Holocaust and the UN Outreach Programme organises activities and develops information materials in partnership with civil society to raise awareness of the Holocaust and its underlying causes, to help prevent genocide, the UN News Service said.
Established by a General Assembly resolution in 2006, the programme encourages young people to respect diversity and learn from the lessons of the Holocaust.
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Or even the millions who died during the Stalinist era.....the Khmer Rouge, Rwanda, the list is long and unfortunately, no part of the world is immune from barbaric acts.
Epami,
isn't it interesting that Mao killed about 30 million Chinese in his "Cultural Revolution" on top of the 20 million in the war and actual revolution and it's those 6 million European victims that the whole world keeps talking about when in comes to mass murder?
I can't speak about Amsterdam, but I can speak about the Warsaw ghetto in the Muranow district of the city and about Auschwitz/Oswiecim in southern Poland.
I saw too much with my own eyes - even in the very early 1960s when I was physically there in Poland - ever to doubt that the Holocaust did indeed take place. The then Peoples' Republic of Poland (Polska Ludowa) didn't have the resources to build a decent new hotel, let alone to fake a 4-hectare concentration camp site with rather authentic German-language signage.
Equally, [...]
Read the full comment it did not then have the resouces to rebuild the shattered streets of the Warsaw Ghetto complete with abandoned tramlines which still connected with the main tram network (getting off a no.12 tram in Muranow, and walking along 1.5 km of abandoned line through the rubble of the former Ghetto until I reached my "dom studencki" in ulica Anielewicza, built out of the rubble and next to what later became the Ghetto memorial).....an ingenious fake ?
No, I somehow don't think so. More likely a sombre testimonial to what had happened there in Warsaw a bare 20 years before.....
"No event in human history has been studied more thoroughly and carefully than the Holocaust"
Frankly Charles,
I think that may be the problem.
As a history buff I am beginning to see the deniers as a backlash against Holocaust over saturation.
10% of all people who perished in WWII were Jews - about 6 million out of almost 60, 28 of which were Russians from none Jewish background.
If you ask any kid in the States, what happened in WWII, they'll probably [...]
Read the full comment tell you two things - Perl Harbor and the Holocaust - both important events to the people involved, but not nearly as dramatic as the rest of that war...
..................................................
sorry to say but anne and the other franks and families would of died earlier if it wasnt for miep gies
that was a very clever idea i personally think that i couldnt of thought about that
This comment has been removed by the moderator because it contained foul, abusive or discriminating language
No event in human history has been studied more thoroughly and carefully than the Holocaust. Thousands of thesis and dissertations papers have poured over mountains of data, from physical evidence and anecdotal testimony to captured German war documents. Virtually everyone with a PhD in History will stake their career on the fact that millions of Jews were systematically exterminated by Nazi Germany. One can no more "revise" this fact than one can revise the existence of gravity. Wannsee Conference records prove that Nazis planned the extermination of Jews as, "The Final Solution." German concentration camp records prove that it was [...]
Read the full comment carried out.
Whenever we stand up to those who deny or minimize genocide we send a critical message to the world. As we continue to live in an age of genocide and ethnic cleansing, we must repel the broken ethics of our ancestors, or risk a dreadful repeat of past transgressions.
Holocaust deniers ply their mendacious poison everywhere, especially with young people on the Internet. Deniers seek to distort the truth in a way that promotes antagonism against the object of their hatred, or to deny the culpability of their ancestors and heroes. If we ignore them, they will twist the minds of countless young people, creating a new generation of those who deny the facts of the worst episode of genocide in history. Freedom of speech and the press is a symbol of a healthy society. Yet, since no crime in history is so heinous as the Holocaust, its memory must be accurately preserved, to protect our children and grandchildren.
Museums and mandatory public education are tools to dispel bigotry, especially racial and ethnic hatred. Books, plays, films and presentations can reinforce the veracity of past and present genocides. They help to tell the true story of the perpetrators of genocide; and they reveal the abject terror, humiliation and degradation resulting from blind prejudice. It is therefore essential that we disclose the factual brutality and horror of genocide, combating the deniers’ virulent, inaccurate historical revision. We must protect vulnerable future generations from making the same mistakes.
A world that continues to allow genocide requires ethical remediation. We must insist that religious, racial, ethnic, gender and orientation persecution is wrong; and that tolerance is our progeny's only hope. Only through such efforts can we reveal the true horror of genocide and promote the triumphant spirit of humankind.
Charles Weinblatt
Author, "Jacob's Courage"
http://jacobscourage.wordpress.com/