Dienke Hondius’ work at the Anne Frank House sparked her interest in what happened to others who hid from the Nazis.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know the hiding place of the Frank family, but there is very little research about hiding (elsewhere during the Holocaust),\u201d said the associate professor of history at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.<\/p>\n
This fall, she came to Stockton University to create a new visiting scholar program at the Sara and Sam Schoffer Holocaust Resource Center.<\/p>\n
\u201cDienke is one of the most prominent Dutch scholars of the Holocaust and also on the experiences of the Frank family and others hiding in the Secret Annex,\u201d HRC Director Irvin Moreno-Rodriguez said.<\/p>\n
She spent a considerable time at Stockton University as a visiting professor of Holocaust Studies in 2020, until the pandemic forced her to go home to the Netherlands early.<\/p>\n
Since returning last month, Hondius has guest lectured in Stockton Holocaust and Genocide Studies classes, visited several South Jersey high schools enrolled in the university\u2019s dual-credit program, and taken part in a speaker series at the Jewish Community Center in Margate.<\/p>\n
She also will be the keynote speaker at the center\u2019s annual Kristallnacht Lecture at 6 p.m. Thursday, at lecture hall L-112 at Stockton\u2019s Galloway campus.<\/p>\n
Her lecture will analyze the early warning signs of rising Nazism and fascism across Europe before World War II and explore new research about the Frank family and their helpers in Amsterdam.<\/p>\n
Kristallnacht, or “The Night of Broken Glass,” was a planned effort by the Nazi’s to attack Jewish businesses and families Nov. 9, 1938. About 91 people were killed and businesses shattered.<\/p>\n
Much of Hondius\u2019 ongoing research stems from the Mapping Hiding Place project, which began at Stockton in 2020 with the help of students.<\/p>\n
During her previous visit, she taught Stockton students how to create online story maps, which are a dynamic way to present a lot of information about a topic using a map for context.<\/p>\n
\u201cMany people who were in hiding went from one place to the next and you can add all these locations in a dynamic map,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The project has grown to include a dedicated website for Hondius\u2019 research. She feels like academics \u201chave not done justice to the importance and the potential of hiding histories\u201d in Holocaust research.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn scholarship about the Holocaust there is often a focus on the survivors of the concentration camps. They are interviewed more often than survivors of hiding,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019ve noticed that there are quite a few survivors of hiding alive. They were small children at the time, but they have fantastic and very interesting stories to tell.\u201d<\/p>\n
Teaching not only on campus but in the community is an important component of the visiting scholar program and is critical to the Holocaust center\u2019s success, Moreno-Rodriguez said.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery year we had a world-renowned scholar of the Holocaust who would come to this small school in the Pine Barrens, teach and then go out in the world to talk about all the wonderful things that we do, not only for students, but for the community,\u201d he said. \u201cThe center was built on this philosophy of town and gown. There are no walls. We learn together, students and community members. And everything we do is free and open to the public.\u201d<\/p>\n
Moreno-Rodriguez credited former HRC Executive Committee member Harvey Rovinsky and his wife, Maddy, along with donations from several other donors with helping to bring Hondius back to Stockton.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Executive Committee members really understood the value of having a world-renowned scholar here at the university for our students and the community,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Hondius appreciates the chance to return to Stockton. She likes the university\u2019s openness and the quality of both its public and educational programs.<\/p>\n
\u201cI like the combination of education, public work and academic work, and that is exactly what the Holocaust Resource Center at Stockton does, and that is quite unique,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Hondius also was pleasantly surprised to learn this fall how many first-generation students attend the university \u2014 51% of undergraduates.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was a first-generation student. My husband was a first-generation student. It\u2019s something we all have in common that we don\u2019t come from families where academic research was something the whole family did,\u201d she said. \u201cI think it is quite inspiring to meet a lot of people from similar backgrounds in a way.\u201d<\/p>\n
Moreno-Rodriguez hopes that Hondius\u2019 visit, which ends Saturday 8, is the start of a new visiting scholar program through the Holocaust Resource Center.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think our students and the community deserve access to world-class Holocaust and Genocide Studies education,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s all about moments where the scholars can go out in the community and into schools and make personal connections with students.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dienke Hondius’ work at the Anne Frank House sparked her interest in what happened to others who hid…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":269204,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4,450,451,3,452,453],"class_list":{"0":"post-269203","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-headlines","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-top-stories","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269203","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=269203"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269203\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/269204"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=269203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=269203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=269203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}