New College to Dedicate
Dr. Helen N. Fagin Holocaust Collection on January 20
More than $40,000 and
1,000 volumes contributed to date for collection which New
College hopes will become largest in the State
January 9, 2008 – New College of Florida has received
more than $40,000 in donations to help establish the Dr.
Helen N. Fagin Holocaust Collection of the Jane Bancroft
Cook Library. The official dedication of the collection will
take place on January 20, 2008 at 2 pm in Sainer Pavilion,
5313 Bay Shore Road in Sarasota.
A special guest speaker for the dedication ceremony will be William S. Parsons, Chief of Staff of
the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington,
DC. Also speaking will be New College President Dr. Gordon
E. Michalson, Jr; Dr. Helen N. Fagin; Joan Pelland, Dean of
the Cook Library; and Dr. Samuel M. Savin, New College Vice
President and Provost.
Initial funding of some $4,500 for the collection came from members of the
Sarasota-Manatee Holocaust Survivors, who met to honor Dr.
Fagin at their annual luncheon in December 2006. The
charter group, led by Barbara and Martin Arch, Sally Lucke
Elkes and Dr. Joel Elkes, and Margrit Schechtman, approached
the New College Library Association with the idea of
expanding the College’s existing collection of Holocaust
literature to honor Dr. Fagin, a Holocaust survivor and leading Holocaust educator.
“We thought it was a great
idea,” recalls Joan Pelland, Dean of the Jane Bancroft Cook
Library at New College of Florida. “Little did we know that it would gather such
momentum.”
Since that initial gift, two foundations have come forward
to support what is hoped will become a major source for
Holocaust research and genocide studies in the state of
Florida. A donation of $10,000 was made by the Fetzer
Institute of Kalamazoo, Michigan, whose stated mission is to
“foster awareness of the power of love and forgiveness in
the emerging global community, resting on the conviction
that efforts to address the world's critical issues must go
beyond political, social, and economic strategies to their
psychological and spiritual roots.”
A grant of $5,000 was also made by The David
Rockefeller Fund, with a special designation by board member Eileen Growald
to honor Dr. Joel Elkes, a member of The Rockefeller Fund
Board and a Sarasota Holocaust Survivor. Other donations,
including an anonymous gift of $10,000,
have been made by individuals wishing to honor Dr. Fagin and
to help launch the collection.
To date, nearly 1,000 volumes have been collected, roughly
half of which were donated by the Florida Holocaust
Museum in St. Petersburg, which formerly sponsored the
Sarasota-Manatee Arch Family Holocaust Education Center in
Sarasota. Likewise, Dr.
Fagin has donated some of her personal collection to the
library, as have other individuals, adding to Holocaust
material that New College’s Cook library has collected over
the years.
Born in Poland, Helen Fagin survived more than five years of
persecution at the hands of the Nazis, finally finding
herself at a Displaced Persons Camp in Austria. She arrived
in the United States in June 1946 and learned English by
reading the New York Times with the help of an
English-German dictionary. A retired professor of English
and former director of Judaic Studies at the University of
Miami, she considers her collection at New College of
Florida to be her true legacy.
“I am most pleased with the choice of New College, an
outstanding liberal arts school, to be the base for teaching
its students the values and lessons of the Holocaust,” she
states.
Dr. Fagin chaired the education committee of the United
States Holocaust Memorial Museum and was appointed by
President Clinton to serve on the World War II Memorial
Committee for the purpose of building a national memorial on
the Mall in Washington, D.C.
To donate to the Dr. Helen N. Fagin Holocaust Collection at
New College of Florida, please contact Jane Summerville
Kiebitz, executive director of the New College Library
Association, at 941-487-4600. Or email
NCLA@ncf.edu.
***
Detailed Bio of Dr. Helen N. Fagin:
Helen Fagin was born in Radomsko, Poland. In 1939 World War
II interrupted her studies at the Jagiellon University in
Cracow, and she endured 5˝ years of Nazi persecution. After
surviving the Holocaust she found herself at a Displaced
Persons Camp in Austria.
She arrived in the United States in 1946 and learned English
by reading the New York Times with the help of an
English–German dictionary. After acquiring a
high-school-equivalency diploma, she gained admittance to
Miami-Dade Junior College. She then was awarded an honors
scholarship to the University of Miami where she majored in
English and minored in Russian and German; she graduated
magna cum laude. After earning a master’s degree, she joined
the University of Miami English faculty. She received her
PhD in 1978.
As a member of the English faculty, Dr. Fagin taught courses
in world literature, the Russian novel, Polish literature in
translation, freshman English and composition, English
grammar and usage, and transformational grammar. In the
1970s Dr. Fagin pioneered by introducing a course in
Holocaust literature into the college curriculum. Later, she
was appointed director of Judaic studies and was responsible
for developing a full program for the department, which
included courses on several aspects of the Holocaust.
In 1979 Dr. Fagin was invited to serve as an education
advisor to Elie Wiesel, then chairman of the United States
Holocaust Memorial Council in Washington, D.C. She was
appointed chairman of the United States Holocaust Council’s
Education Committee, in charge of developing an educational
track for the future United States Holocaust Memorial
Museum. During the planning stage of the museum, Dr. Fagin
served as a member of the Museum Content Committee, which
determined the content and the themes for the museum’s
exhibitions. In addition, Dr. Fagin served on the United
States Holocaust Museum’s Academic Committee as one of its
four-member Postdoctoral Fellowship Committee.
After taking early retirement from the University of Miami,
Dr. Fagin initiated and oversaw the building of the highly
acclaimed Holocaust Memorial on Miami Beach, having authored
all the text gracing its granite walls.
In 1993 President Clinton appointed Dr. Fagin to the World
War II Memorial Committee, which was established for the
purpose of building a national memorial to World War II on
the Mall, in Washington, D.C. For the ensuing 10 years Dr.
Fagin served as a working member of the World War II
Memorial Committee’s Site and Design Group in a
decision-making capacity until the memorial’s dedication in
2003.
Dr. Fagin served on the executive committee of the Florida
Holocaust Museum in St. Petersburg, FL, and in 2005, she was
awarded its prestigious Loebenberg Humanitarian Award.
Helen Fagin has written many articles on Holocaust
education, all deriving from her special approach to
teaching the Holocaust as a constructive moral lesson. In
her postretirement years she has continued her commitment to
Holocaust education by speaking and lecturing about the
lessons of the Holocaust for our times.
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