IRVINE : College Schedules Speech on Holocaust

The ethnic fighting in the former Yugoslavia has provided Prof. Richard Prystowsky with a grim instructional aide when he teaches his Irvine Valley College students about the Holocaust.

“For a number of years, when students asked how the Holocaust could have happened, I had a difficult time answering the question,” he said. “I still have a difficult time, but tragically, I can point to what is happening in Bosnia.”

Prystowsky, an English and humanities professor, and others at the college will mark Holocaust Remembrance Week with a speech Thursday by Holocaust survivor Osi Sladek.

Organizers hope that the event will foster increased awareness of the Holocaust and provide people new insights into the bloody consequences of ethnic hatreds, both today and 50 years ago.

“It seems to me that one of the sad lessons of the Holocaust is that it shows what happens when (the world) doesn’t seem to care about massive suffering,” Prystowsky said. “What’s going on in Bosnia is a painful reminder of what we are talking about.”

Thursday’s speech is sponsored by the college’s Jewish Student Union, where Prystowsky is the faculty adviser. The talk is one of a number of events scheduled around the globe this week to commemorate the Holocaust.

The theme of the 1993 Holocaust Remembrance Week is the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943, when Jews rebelled against their Nazi captors in a failed resistance campaign that lasted a month.

Prystowsky said the uprising is important because it shows that Jews did all they could to resist the Nazis. It also suggests what might have happened if other European countries tried to stop rather than appease Germany.

The 7 p.m. talk Thursday will be in Dining Rooms 1 and 2 of Irvine Valley College’s cafeteria.