Holocaust Memorial Social Action Site Sarah Pessin, Creative Director

In her role as Interfaith Chair and Director of the Center for Judaic Studies, Sarah has served as the creative director of the Holocaust Memorial Social Action Site since 2008. She worked with community leaders, Mark Rodgers (the University Architect) and his team, and other campus partners to raise funds for and to offer key design and pedagogical direction for DU's Holocaust Memorial Social Action Site. The site stems from the Center for Judaic Studies' Holocaust Awareness Institute and was designed as a campus and city wide space for "tikkun olam" (repairing the world). The site is framed by metal lattices -- constructed in the image of shattered glass -- spelling out the Hebrew term "hineni," "here I am." In the post-Holocaust philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas, this phrase marks the human subject as a site of response to the call of the Other. It is in this deeply ethical spirit that the site invites participants to reflection and dialogue in the spirit of intercultural bridge-building and social justice. The site also includes a central stone seating bench; forged in the shape of the Hebrew word 'chai' ('life') and mimicking the countours of a flame, the gathering of people in learning, dialogue, and action serves as this Memorial's "eternal flame."

To date, the site has hosted such wide-ranging activities and events as a student digital art installation, a dance event on memory and trauma by a local dance group, a meeting of high school students and Holocaust survivors, an installation of Native prayer flags, a gathering of local church leaders, a Native incantation, an interfaith workshop, a sexual assault prevention meeting, and a digital storytelling project that addressed themes from poverty to current-day slave-trading to anti-Latinx prejudice in America.

Contact Sarah at: sarah.pessin@du.edu

Visit Sarah's webpage at: sarahpessin.com