As Spring starts, we look forward to seeing everyone at the many upcoming events on the calendar this year. Two new members, Angie Pichard and Ellie Simon, were welcomed to the HERC Board last month. Their passion and expertise will strengthen HERC as the organization continues to grow.

HERC would also like to recognize and show appreciation to Bill Graham and Shelley Hill for their ongoing contributions and continuing support of HERC. We could not provide the important programs without the many special people like them. Sending a gift, shows that you care about the education of our children and helps sustain the critical and necessary resources provided to schools.

At the milestone of the 20th Anniversary of HERC, we would like to reflect on the accomplishments that we achieved together in the past twenty years. During its two decades, HERC has reached hundreds of teachers and educated thousands of students with accurate and updated Holocaust resources.

What HERC Does?

• Provides education and resources for teachers, schools, and students.
• Conducts community and public educational programs.
• Distributes newsletters.
• Hosts events that engage the community with presentations from Holocaust survivors, children of survivors, liberators and historians.
• Facilitates book clubs and reading groups.
• Provides teacher training workshops for over fifty educators annually.
• Hots an Annual Remembrance Dinner to honor Holocaust victims and survivors, their families, and legacies.
• Shows six films a year in the Window into the Truth Liberation 80 Film Series.
• Provides ten Principals with an immersive trip to Washington, DC, visiting the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the African American History Museum.
• Visits schools to provide instructional presentations on the history of the Holocaust.

None of HERC’s achievements could be accomplished without the contributions of the generous donors. Anyone can support HERC’s mission by volunteering personal time and/or giving financial contributions. Please do not hesitate to reach out to us or attend any of our programs.

Dates to Remember in Holocaust History

1925

• February 27 – Adolf Hitler is appointed the leader of the reestablished Nazi

Party just after he is released from Landsberg Prison where he served nine months for treason

• July 18 – Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf is published

1935

• September 15 – During a special session, Parliament passed the anti-Semitic “Nuremberg Laws,” the “National Citizens Law,” and the “Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor.” These laws were the basis for the exclusion of Jews (as well as Gypsies and black people) from all public business life and for the reclassification of the political rights of Jewish citizens. Jews can no longer exist as German citizens or marry non-Jews
• November 14 – First decree pertaining the “National Law of Citizenship”: Jews denied voting rights and forbidden to hold public office. Discharge of all Jewish civil service employees, including World War I front line veterans. Official definitions of “Jew” established for the first time (anyone who has two Jewish grandparents and is a member of the Jewish religious community, and anyone with three or more Jewish grandparents) and “Mischlinge” (mixed race; that is, part Jew). Marriages between Jews and second-generation Mischlinge are prohibited

1945

• January 27 – Soviet forces entered Auschwitz. Since 1942, between 1.1 million and 1.3 million Jews and thousands of Soviet prisoners of war, Poles and Roma (Gypsies) had been murdered there
• April – Advancing American forces liberated Buchenwald, Mauthausen and Dachau were liberated by the Americans and the British army liberated Bergen Belsen concentration camp
• May 8 – The war in Europe officially ended