On Thursday, members of two different faiths came together to further their understanding of a common cause.
Student members of Hillel and the Sheil Catholic Center made a joint visit to the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center on Thursday afternoon for a field trip led by the the center’s specially trained guides, called docents. Following the museum visit, the students returned to Sheil for dinner and a discussion about Holocaust awareness, modern genocides and how members of both religious groups can prevent such events in the future.
“(The trip) isn’t about just learning about the past,” said trip organizer Jennifer Long, the president of Students Helping Organize Awareness about the Holocaust. “We can learn how to apply lessons from the past to what goes on right now.”
Long’s family was involved in the effort of building the museum, and the Weinberg senior said she wanted to organize the trip to make the Skokie-based museum more accessible to NU students. She worked with Sheil Pastoral Assistant Mary Deeley to plan the outing because she wanted to make it “not just for Jewish students” but for other communities as well.
Maria Zarate, a Weinberg junior, said that she was initially surprised when she saw the trip advertised at Sheil.
Long agreed that the joint trip was a beneficial opportunity for both groups.
“The Holocaust is all about interfaith relations and understanding between groups, so it is good to experience the museum together,” Long said.
She hopes that her group, SHOAH, will offer quarterly trips to the museum. The trip was free to the students through funding from a grant from the Israel Initiative, Hillel and Sheil, as well as a fund set up by community member Jane Miller through Sheil for “education about the Jewish-Catholic relationship,” Deeley said.
Deeley said she hoped that the trip would make students think about what steps can be taken to make sure the Holocaust “never happens again.”
The museum opened in April, and though most of its collection is complete, some exhibits are still under construction. Though the museum is not far from campus, some students said they were excited to get the chance to visit, since the location is not easily accessible without a car.
“It is incredible this was offered,” said SESP senior Sarah Rosenbaum, who had visited the museum twice before Thursday’s trip. “It is a fantastic opportunity for people who couldn’t get to the museum otherwise.”
Weinberg senior David Karsenti said he appreciated the commentary from a museum expert.
“It was nice to have a docent-led tour,” he said. “I think the museum might rival the one in D.C.”
Kelley Szany, the associate director of education from the museum, spoke to the students afterwards about the Holocaust as part of the collective human past, as well as her experience as a Catholic studying the history of the Holocaust and working at the museum.
“We have learned very little from the past so far…the Holocaust is unprecedented but not unique,” she said. “To say it is unique is to say it could never happen again.”
