Justina Bello

By Kim Klett, PHA board member and educator April 2023 “April is the cruelest month,” wrote poet T.S. Eliot, and looking at the genocidal acts and human rights violations that have occurred in April, he was correct. As we enter April and Genocide Remembrance Month, it is imperative to remember, reflect, and strive to do better in combatting genocide wherever and whenever we see it happening. This April, students in my year-long Holocaust Literature course continue learning about Rwanda and will begin learning about genocide in Darfur. Darfur was the first “other genocide” I began teaching after I had started this course (then semester-long) in 2000. The first few years of the course, I only focused on the Holocaust, as…

   Feb 2023 Imagining the moment of ‘liberation” might conjure up visions of people dancing in the streets or toasting with champagne. That was the media version of V-E Day, but it was certainly NOTthe picture of the state of liberation for Jewish Holocaust survivors. Most survivors were barely alive. And many who survived to see their liberators died in the days, weeks, and monthsthereafter of starvation, overeating, injuries, disease and exhaustion. Every survivor vividly remembers the moments leading up to the long-awaited dream of liberation from bondage, slavery, exile, starvation, abuse, and the fear of murderous extinction. Many even described their experiences in oral, video, or written testimonies.  But there was no ONE event of liberation, as there was…

Choir in Landsberg DP camp, c. 1947. Two of the young women pictured are Nechama Santocki (later Shneorson) and Reva Sidrer (later Baran). They are the aunts of PHA board member Ettie Zilber; they donated this photo to USHMM.

Choir in Landsberg DP camp, c. 1947. Two of the young women pictured are Nechama Santocki (later Shneorson) and Reva Sidrer (later Baran). They are the aunts of PHA board member Ettie Zilber; they donated this photo to USHMM.

   I consider myself a well-educated person, with a few high academic degrees, which made my motherproud. I grew up and was educated in New York. After living and working in five other countries, Irelocated to Phoenix, Arizona and became active as a volunteer at the Heard Museum(https://heard.org/). This was the first time I learned about the terrible abuses against AmericanIndians, including the history of the infamous Boarding Schools for American Indian children. I washorrified to learn that children were forced–actually kidnapped–and sent thousands of miles awayfrom home to government or church-run schools throughout the United States. I was mortified and‘uncomfortable’ to learn that my own government was responsible for these decisions, theseviolations of treaties, these deaths, and these abuses….