On July 8, 2018, Pastor Shannon J. Kershner of the Fourth Presbyterian Church located in Chicago, Illinois gave a sermon in which she focused on the Davidson College men's basketball team's trip to Auschwitz.  Holocaust education is a topic that transcends religious affiliation, and this sermon is proof of the power of interfaith education.  

Stronger and More Tender “A Spirit Revolution”: A Sermon Series on the Acts of the Apostles
Shannon J. Kershner

Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church
Psalm 98
Acts 10:1–17, 34–35

Faith, when it comes down to it, is an often breathless attempt to keep up with the redemptive activity of God, to keep asking ourselves, “What is God doing? Where on earth is God going now?”
William Willimon
Biblical Commentary for Preaching and Teaching: Acts of the Apostles

Have you ever had a surprising experience, good or bad, that caused your whole worldview to change or perhaps even caused your whole life to change directions—an experience that made your heart grow stronger and more tender at the same time?

That is exactly what Coach Bob McKillop hopes is happening right now to the young men on his team. McKillop is the head coach of the Davidson College men’s basketball team. Davidson is a Presbyterian-affiliated liberal arts college with an enrollment of around 1,800, located right outside of Charlotte, North Carolina. Those of you who enjoy college basketball would know it due to one of its famous alumni—Stephen Curry. Curry led the team to the edge of making it into the Final Four back in 2008, when he was a college sophomore.

During this week in 2018, however, what happened ten years ago is not the focus for either the coach or the current team. Rather, what matters to them right now is what happened beginning in 1940 and lasting until 1945. You see, Coach McKillop took his entire basketball team from Davidson College to Auschwitz.

In his own words, here is why he believed the pilgrimage was critical:

The volatility of our world right now requires a response informed by both a respect for human dignity and an understanding of what happens in its absence. . . . We are stepping into a moment in time when, for millions, evil seemed to have triumphed and humanity [had] vanished. . . . I want them to understand this experience, for life, and to bring it back here, not just as a lesson but to live what they learned. Our world needs leaders who aim to lead and to serve, . . . guided by human instincts and creative and disciplined minds. We need advocates for, and defenders of, human dignity. . . . That is why we are going. (Bob McKillop, “Grade Point,” Washington Post, 3 July 2018)

I would imagine that over the four days they were there the Davidson College men’s basketball team had some experiences that caused their whole worldview to change. Perhaps as a result of what they learned, what they saw, what they heard from their guide—who is a survivor of that very concentration camp—some of those young men might even decide to study something else or to go into law or advocacy or ministry or, please, politics.

My prayer is that God is using that moment in their young lives to make their hearts stronger and more tender at the same time. That God is expanding their vision about who is family and why that matters. That they are being immersed into the profound importance of both recognizing the dignity of every person and fighting for that dignity to be seen by every person. Now that their journey is over and after they have had time to debrief with each other and with their families, I hope they will write about their experiences, because, as their coach stated, quoting General Eisenhower, “the lessons of ‘indescribable horror’ [that they are learning] remain as urgent and timely as ever.”

The experience of serving in our nation’s armed forces during World War II had a similar effect on my theological hero, the late William Sloane Coffin. As he reflected in a sermon entitled “Why I Became a Minister,” Dr. Coffin claimed that the hellish experience of war, especially that war—the daily experience of seeing brutality up close and personal, of becoming immersed in, as he put it, “the sullied stream of human life”—is ultimately what made him ready for a religious experience. All of what he saw and did led him to begin asking the right kinds of questions—questions that helped him become more open to learn of a deeper reality. Yet as he preached, it still took him a while, even after all of that, to be open to the work of the church.

He said, “One thing I hadn’t realized is that Christians are always the best argument against Christianity.” (He had a way with words.) “I allowed myself to be put off by the churches. . . . It offended my understanding of the gospel to see the churches become protected and withdrawn islands of piety in a sea of social ills” (William Sloane Coffin, “Why I Became a Minister,” sermon preached at Riverside Church, New York City, 5 October 1986). But over time, due to the teaching of bright lights like Reinhold Niebuhr and James Muilenburg, he discovered that even through all of those difficult, demanding, and often awful experiences, God had still managed to tenderize Coffin’s heart and make it stronger. As a result, Coffin felt drawn deeper and deeper into the vocation of ministry, into being one of God’s hard hats for hope as his profession.

I believe Peter had a world-shaking, worldview-changing experience like the basketball players just had, like Coffin had beginning with World War II. Peter’s experience started that day on the rooftop in Joppa and continued when he showed up in Caesarea at the home of the Gentile soldier named Cornelius. As Auschwitz is not the normal destination of a college basketball team and ministering within the Christian church was not how a young William Sloane Coffin pictured spending his one wild and precious life, that Gentile soldier’s home was not at all where Peter had ever expected to travel. It did not fit with the way he was raised. It did not make sense with all that he had been taught about how the world worked. Until he had that strange, strange vision, he never would have conceived of making that kind of a journey.

Listen to how he tried to explain it to the church leadership after the fact, when he found himself in trouble for following it. This passage is later in Acts 11: “I was praying and saw a vision,” he told them.

The heavens opened and something like a large sheet came down, lowered to the ground by its four corners. When I looked inside it, I saw every kind of forbidden creature—camels, badgers, buzzards, bats, crocodiles, lizards, a pig—all the things on the “don’t eat” list in Leviticus 11, part of our holy law. And then I heard a voice that said, “Get up, Peter: Kill and eat.” I knew it was God’s voice. I recognized it. But I just could not do what God was telling me to do. It went against everything I had heard before. It went against everything I was taught, against all the Torah I had memorized and applied to my life, against everything my parents had ever said about faithful living. And then God said, “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.” This happened three times, and then the sheet went back into heaven. (Barbara Brown Taylor’s rendition of Peter’s dream in The Bread of Angels, p. 77, helped me put it into more contemporary language)

That is roughly how Peter himself summed up that strange visual experience. But then, as if that were not enough, after Peter had that startling vision, he came back to himself only to encounter strangers who had been sent by a soldier named Cornelius to take him, a leader in the Jewish Christian church, to Cornelius’s house, someone who was a Gentile, an outsider to the covenant. The whole thought of it made Peter’s knees shake and his stomach upset, and yet he went with them anyway.

Unfortunately we did not have enough time to read the rest of the story today, but know this: even until the very moment that Peter walked into Cornelius’s house, Peter still felt incredibly uneasy and scared about what he was doing. So much so that some of the first words out of his mouth to Cornelius and his family were words of judgment and fear: “You yourselves know that it is unlawful for a Jew to associate with or to visit a Gentile . . .” Yet something suddenly clicked in Peter, for immediately after he made that claim, the purpose of the vision became clearer. Standing there in Cornelius’s living room, surrounded by those he did not believe he was even supposed to be around, it was as if his heart grew more tender and stronger at the same time. His vision was not about food, he realized. His vision, his revelation, was about people. It was about those he could consider a part of the family.

With that new clarity in mind, Peter followed up his statement of distaste with the important gospel word but. Barbara Brown Taylor thinks the whole gospel might swing on that word, that conjunction but. “I was lost but now I’m found. I was blind but now I see.” That one word means that “things can change. [That one word] means we do not always know everything there is to know. [That one word implies] God can still teach us something” (Barbara Brown Taylor’s rendition of Peter’s dream in The Bread of Angels, p. 78).

In the African American preaching tradition, we would add one more thing, though, to that one word. We would add the name of the Holy One, so that the conjunction signaling change also might become a phrase of holy defiance. “But God” would be how we would put it, which is exactly what Peter said. “You yourselves know that it is unlawful for a Jew to associate with or to visit a Gentile. But God has shown me that I should not call anyone profane or unclean.” No, what God has made clean, who God has made clean through the self-giving inclusive love of Jesus Christ, I must never call profane. I must never treat them in a way that makes them feel they are unclean. I must never forget their dignity as people created in God’s image. Then do you know what Peter did? He baptized all of them and said, welcome into the family, and he stayed with them for several days. What a huge worldview shift!

Later he went even a step further. When all of those other church leaders forced Peter to defend his actions, Peter just shouted out “Who was I that I could hinder God?” Those words illustrate just how strong and how tender Peter’s heart had become through that world-shaking, worldview changing experience. And Scripture says when they (the good church folk who were upset with him) heard him say that, they were silenced. I’d like to think, and Scripture bears some witness to it, that because of Peter’s courageous actions, some of his adversaries might have also had a completely unexpected, world-shaking, worldview changing experience too. One that made their hearts more tender and stronger at the same time. An experience that made them change their understanding of what was faithful, that helped give them clarity that what we say about people really does affect the way we think of them and treat them.

Today, as you know, is July 8. I spent July 4 with my family down in Texas, but I have to confess to you that celebration was not my focus. Now, please hear me out before you decide you already know what I am going to say. I promise you I have been trying hard to fight the temptation of viewing the gospel through the lens of my politics in the hope that I can do a better job of viewing my politics through the lens of the gospel. I would invite all of you to join me in that spiritual discipline. It’s harder than it sounds.

But friends, as I fought that internal temptation, one thing that kept coming up time and time again in my soul was a deep grief over all the evidence that we, as a nation, are dangerously close to losing our dream of who we can be together. We might even use Coffin’s words that we are becoming both more immersed and more used to being immersed into a sullied stream of human life.

Down there in Texas I would study and pray over this passage from Acts and then turn on the news and learn just how many migrant children have still not been reunited with their families and how, as the PBS NewsHour put it, many of those who have been reunited are so traumatized by their experience they seem like different kids (PBS NewsHour, 5 July 2018: https://to.pbs.org/2ui9ZFV). With that going across the screen, I kept looking to this passage from Acts and back up to the news dumfounded. What in us, in our national ethos, is making it OK to see these little ones as profane enough that we can treat them that way? I understand that we have to keep our borders safe and strong, but God has told us, Jesus people, what God has made clean we must never call or treat as profane.

Furthermore—and I know our track record is spotty on this one—as people who follow Jesus, we must stop making it OK for anyone to refer to another human being, who is also created in God’s image, in a derogatory way as an animal or as an infestation or as somehow “less than.” If we let that become normal, we forget the lessons that Coach McKillop is trying to teach his basketball players about the critical necessity of advocating for and defending human dignity. I hope you can hear this: that is not viewing the gospel through the lens of anyone’s politics; that is viewing our politics through the lens of the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ.

The lens of the Gospel declares to us that all the name-calling, all the meanness, all the outright demonization of each other is antithetical to how we have been made and who we are called to be. What God has made clean, which we Presbyterian Christians typically believe means everyone, we must never call or treat as profane, as unclean, as less than. That is the gospel truth, for Jesus went to great lengths to make sure that after he told us we are to love each other as siblings that we knew that commandment meant everyone—“including those most unlike us, those who do not fit, those who upset us and make us uncomfortable” (Walter Brueggemann, A Gospel of Hope, p. 86).

Perhaps we need to start praying for some Peter-like visions these days. Visions that will shake us out of our stupor of normalized apathy. Visions that could possibly change our entire worldview as to who is worthy of being included. Visions that would open up enough space in us for God to make all of our hearts stronger and more tender, more compassionate, more loving—all at the same time.

In the meantime, I think I will send a note to Coach McKillop at Davidson College and ask him if his players would please write up what they learned on their trip to Auschwitz so we might learn from their surprising experience and remember again what it means to advocate for and defend the human dignity of all and the danger that could come if we stop thinking that it matters. For in Christ, God was reconciling the world to God’s self. That is not fake news. That’s the gospel truth. So be of courage, church. And step up. Amen.

Author's Note: Some of the players did, in fact, write about their experience in Auschwitz.  You can read their accounts on our blog.  Thank you to Pastor Kershner for highlighting the importance of this trip.  This sermon can be found on the Fourth Presbyterian Church website: ​http://www.fourthchurch.org/sermons/2018/070818.html?print=true

​This week, we are taking the players we coach on the men’s basketball team at Davidson College to Auschwitz.

The volatility of our world right now requires a response informed by both a respect for human dignity and an understanding of what happens in its absence.

Life, sports, academics and experience have challenged these young men in myriad ways. They have never been tested like this.

On Saturday, we flew partway around the globe to Poland. We are stepping into a moment in time when, for millions, evil seemed to have triumphed and humanity has vanished. We will walk the gas chambers and railroad tracks of Auschwitz with a survivor of Josef Mengele’s inhuman experiments as our guide.

(We will not touch a basketball the entire trip.)

Our work as coaches transcends the field or court — or the classroom.

What keeps me so alive after 29 years of coaching Division I basketball is that our players are not just players. They are human beings and scholar-athletes at a college where we — all of us — nurture and value their development.

Four years ago, I visited Auschwitz on a cold, misty day. As a history major at Hofstra University and a high school history teacher early in my career, I thought I understood the Holocaust. But to smell it, taste it and see the gas chambers, the barracks and the barbed wire up close was life-altering.

We take this trip thanks to the Maimonides Institute for Medicine, Ethics and the Holocaust, and through the eyes of Eva Mozes Kor, a survivor of Mengele’s twin experiments. She will lead the way and tell the story, and our players will feel the incalculable weight of history.

A Davidson professor in German Studies, who is a Holocaust expert, cautioned in a pre-trip conversation with the team that each of them, at some point, will break down — in the camp, in the hotel room that night, on the trip home, back in North Carolina. The emotional tonnage is inescapable.

This is an opportunity for the players to coach — first themselves through this experience, then teammates, as they lean on one another, and then throughout their lives. They will depend on one another emotionally. The trip will require teamwork and togetherness of a new order for them. That is where we find our strength.

I want them to understand this experience, for life, and to bring it back here, not just as a lesson but to live what they learned. Our world needs leaders who aim to lead and to serve, as our college’s mission declares, guided by humane instincts and creative and disciplined minds. We need advocates for, and defenders of, human dignity.

Allied troops liberated the first Nazi concentration camps — what Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower called “indescribable horror” — 74 years ago. He called for members of Congress to come see it, as well as newspaper editors and British leaders. The lessons he sought to impart then remain as urgent and timely as ever.

That is why we are going.

Bob McKillop is head coach of the Davidson College men’s basketball team and the fifth-longest-serving active coach in the NCAA.

​https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2018/07/03/why-take-our-college-basketball-team-to-auschwitz/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.8b9fb9ab9c0e

New York City | July 23 – August 3, 2018

GLOBAL BIOETHICS, HUMAN RIGHTS & PUBLIC POLICY

Global Bioethics Initiative (GBI), in collaboration with New York Medical College and the Bohemian Benevolent and Literary Association, invites students and professionals worldwide to attend the International Bioethics Summer School hosted by the Bohemian National Hall. Join us for this one-of-a-kind educational opportunity!

VENUE

Bohemian National Hall,  321 E 73rd Street, New York, NY 10021
A beautiful and iconic building, the Bohemian National Hall (BNH) was originally a Center for Czech and Slovak immigrants and is well known for being a diplomatic, cultural and social center. Grandiosely re-opened in 2008 after a complete and vast restoration, it became the seat of the Consulate General of the Czech Republic, the Czech Center New York and the Bohemian Benevolent and Literary Association (BBLA). 

CURRICULUM

The International Bioethics Summer School Program includes a series of lectures and seminars, field trips, film screenings, and evening events with guest speakers. Click here for information about the summer program.

FACULTY

The faculty of the summer school program is comprised of notable international scholars who will lecture and conduct seminars on various bioethical topics. Please visit the faculty page for more information.

FINAL CONFERENCE FORUM

All participants will present their final papers (written under a faculty member’s supervision) at a conference forum during the final week of the program.

PARTIAL SCHOLARSHIPS

In order to make the summer school program truly global, GBI is offering several partial scholarships to participants from low-income countries. In exceptional cases, provided that funds are still available, the selection committee can award applicants from high-income countries as well.
To apply for a partial scholarship, please include a 300-500 word statement with the rest of your application materials describing how you would benefit from it. The deadline to apply for partial scholarship consideration is  July 1, 2018.  Partial scholarship applications received after this deadline will be reviewed if additional funds are available. Click here for more details and apply!
Some participants may wish to seek financial assistance or scholarships from their home educational institutions or outside sources to cover expenses.

GRADUATE CERTIFICATE

Following the completion of the program, participants will receive a certificate in Global Bioethics during a graduation ceremony and banquet.

UNIVERSITY CREDITS

Students may request credits from their home educational institutions. The awarding of credits is at the discretion of each student’s institution. 

HOUSING

Please check the housing page for information regarding campus housing. Some participants may wish to make individual housing arrangements using Airbnb or otherrental sources. Housing costs are NOT included in the registration fees.

REGISTRATION
Summer program participants are responsible for their registration fees, travel arrangements, and accommodation costs.

*The summer program registration fees are 100% tax deductible as GBI is a tax-exempt organization under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. As such, your registration fees are considered donations. 

APPLICATION FEE $30 | Nonrefundable
PARTIAL SCHOLARSHIP APPLICATIONS:
DEADLINE: July 1, 2018
 
EARLY REGISTRATION FEES:
(Once you have been accepted)DEADLINE: July 1, 2018
$950 | High School Seniors | ONE-WEEK FEE: $550
$1050 | University Students | ONE-WEEK FEE: $650
$1150 | Professionals | ONE-WEEK FEE: $750
REGULAR REGISTRATION FEES:
(Once you have been accepted)
Non-U.S. Citizens – DEADLINE: July 1
         U.S. Citizens – DEADLINE: July 5
$1050 | High School Seniors | ONE-WEEK FEE: $650
$1150 | University Students | ONE-WEEK FEE: $750
$1250 | Professionals | ONE-WEEK FEE: $850

For more information, click on the links to visit these websites:  Global Bioethics Initiative, New York Medical College, Bohemian Benevolent, and Literary Association, United Nations Academic Impact

It’s no secret that we now live in an era of information sharing, and that such sharing not infrequently includes personal medical details. To cite one example: in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica Facebook data scandal, New York Times staff editor Kathleen O’Brien wrote an article entitled “I Can’t Jump Ship From Facebook Yet”  (April 14, 2018). The gist of this piece was that parents of children with various psychiatric or rare medical conditions find solace on social media. As she puts it,
 
For me, user-created Facebook groups for special-needs parents function like a very convenient support group you can check in with as your time-crunched life permits. People share recommendations and advice. They vent about schools, health insurance and daily life. I am not even that active in these groups, but it’s reassuring to hear from other parents, even just online.
 
This is emblematic of the kind of voluntary release of private medical information that occurs online. Ms. O’Brien has publicly identified her son as autistic.  She continues in the article to discuss other people by name and to reveal the rare medical conditions from which their children suffer.
 
Additional examples of this kind of sharing abound. A casual scroll through one’s Facebook feed frequently yields a number of friends who are, ostensibly in the service of ‘reaching out’ for (or conversely, providing) the kind of support that O’Brien talks about, discussing their own mental or physical health. Everything from insomnia to anxiety to depression to MS to thyroid conditions is fair game on social media. In addition, seemingly innocuous screening tools often pop up, as well as cute quizzes that purport to give various diagnoses or risk assessments.
 
Add to all of this the various tracking apps – everything from fitness trackers that measure one’s steps to location services that log one’s every move – and it becomes clear that we as a society have voluntarily surrendered vast quantities of information about our physical and mental health to anyone interested in acquiring it. And not just our own information – in the case of Ms. O’Brien and others like her, information about our children.
 
We are accustomed to thinking of our medical records as private; in fact, there are laws governing this kind of privacy. But we fail to see that once everything is online and out of our hands, it becomes fair game for abuse.
 
Many people no doubt see this concern as excessively paranoid. What possible use could anyone make of my pedometer information other than to try to sell me running shoes, I might wonder. 
 
But this complacency overlooks the extremely dark history of the way in which medical information has been used in the service of forced sterilization, torturous ‘experimentation,’ and euthanasia and extermination. The most egregious example of this is the Nazi eugenics program, a program that many Americans are unfortunately unaware of.
 
According to Rael D. Strous, M.D., in his article “Hitler’s Psychiatrists” (Harvard Review of Psychiatry, 2006), “Indeed, perhaps more than other medical specialties, psychiatry and psychiatrists played a pivotal role in the Nazi extermination machine—from the selection, identification, and labeling of mentally ill individuals marked for murder to the actual facilitation and supervision of their eventual murder through what came to be a highly sophisticated and efficient extermination process” (31).
 
It is important to note the ‘selection, identification, and labeling’ aspect of this process. In order to carry out their program of ‘racial cleansing,’ the Nazis had first to determine who among them were the ‘impure’ individuals who were compromising the ‘health’ of the German populace. They had to determine whose lives were not worth living, and they did so by means of medical records.
 
It is further important to point out that these cooperating medical professionals most likely did not see what they were doing as problematic. Indeed, they were committed to a cause that made perfect sense to them. Unless we learn about and fully confront the logic of their cooperation, we cannot recognize the same impulses at work in our society today.
 
Again, according to Strous, “Many of the scientists were acting according to what they considered to be the genuine interests of society,” and “all psychiatric institutions readily acquiesced in the request to provide lists of those who were hospitalized for over five years, criminal mentally ill, or not employable” (32).
 
Thus, we see two significant points here: first, that medical professionals thought what they were doing was right, and second, that they made use of medical records to make their determinations.
 
It might therefore be prudent to ask ourselves whether it is really harmless to have surrendered data about our mental and physical health to forces we cannot identify. The Cambridge Analytics breach permitted the political campaign of Donald Trump to obtain this kind of information. That means that the current government can, if it so desires, compile lists of U.S. citizens with various self-identified medical conditions. Presumably, our government might know what medications we take, what our blood pressure readings and cholesterol levels are, and what kind of risk for dementia we have. And that is just one stakeholder that we are aware of – all kinds of other entities may have this data by now.
 
What prevents them – or anyone – from deciding that, for the good of the society, we cannot use limited resources to maintain the lives of people whom they determine to be non-productive or potentially harmful? It is now too late to erase the digital footprints we have left all over the internet; it might behoove us to start thinking about both our future behavior and ways to protect ourselves from potential abuses.
 
Beyond that, though, we must be wary. We must be on our guard for any signs that our nation is going down the path that the German people so blithely traversed in the 1930s. Are there signs that this is happening? What might they look like?
 
I would suggest that there are three. First, there must be a nationalistic movement that seeks to return to an imaginary Golden Age and that defines the ‘true’ members of the nation in specific ways that marginalize vulnerable populations. Second, there must be a sense that economic resources are limited and cannot be ‘wasted’ on unproductive members of society. And third, there must be ways of identifying and categorizing ‘undesirable’ persons such that they can be targeted for discrimination.
 
I have suggested here that the third point is already very much in play, and that we have identified and categorized ourselves voluntarily, making it extremely easy for unscrupulous parties to sort us for their own ends. This is already happening. I believe that sufficient evidence for the first two conditions exists as well, but that is beyond the scope of what I address today.
 
At the very least, we must, as I’ve suggested, be cautious about sharing our personal medical information and be on our guards as to ways that it could be abused. And in order to convince the younger members of our society of this potential danger, it is absolutely essential that we teach them about the eugenics movement and its role in setting the stage for the Holocaust. We ignore this history at our peril.

Nancy Rehm spent 31 years teaching in the Pennsylvania public school system. She has taught everything from first grade through college. The last 22 years of her career were spent at the high school level, where she created and ran a unique integrated humanities program for gifted students focused on connections among various disciplines, including literature, philosophy, history, science, and the arts. She has certificates in both secondary English and K-12 Special Education, and holds a Masters Degree in Special Ed. An artist and a writer as well, she now lives in Dallas, PA. 

The results of a recent study published in the New York Times confirm that there is a lack of basic knowledge regarding the Holocaust among most Americans.  The study also showed that the vast majority of people believe that Holocaust education should be mandatory.  MIMEH firmly agrees with this viewpoint, and we are actively working towards the creation of materials that can be used as part of a required curriculum on the Holocaust.

We also recognize that large-scale change takes time.  Our challenge thus becomes figuring out how to bridge the gap in Holocaust education while working towards a mandatory inclusion of this topic within educational systems.  MIMEH is committed to meeting this challenge head on by developing new and innovative methods for ensuring that the memory of those who perished during the Holocaust is not forgotten, but rather serves as a reminder of what can happen when we don't respect the basic human dignity inherent in all people.  Understanding the role of medical ethics during and after the Holocaust is an essential part of our mission of reflecting on the past to protect the future. 

In the coming weeks and months, MIMEH will be introducing new initiatives aimed at reaching a broader audience.  Our goal is to transcend the traditional barriers of Holocaust education - age, religion, geographic location, etc. - to provide resources and materials for ALL people.  We will begin by introducing a guest blogger series where people who are interested in this topic can contribute blog posts for possible publication on our website.  This will provide a forum for both academics and laypeople to engage in a respectful discourse on the topic.  It will also allow for an examination of the nuances of medical ethics during and after the Holocaust.   

Our first guest blog post, "The Importance of Teaching the Holocaust in the Information Age" explores the relationship between the use of medical records to label and persecute people during the Holocaust and the potential dangers that accompany revealing private medical information on social media and other internet forums.  Look for this blog post to be published in the next few days.  We hope it inspires you to join the conversation.

A new study published in the New York Times revealed some alarming facts about Holocaust education:

• 31% of Americans and 41% of millennials (ages 18-34) believe that 2 million or fewer Jews were killed in the Holocaust.
• 41% of Americans and 66% of millennials cannot say what Auschwitz was.
• 52% of respondents wrongly believe Hitler came to power through force.

There were, however, a few bright spots among the survey:

• 93% of respondents think all students should learn about the Holocaust at school.
• 96% of respondents believe the genocide happened.

This survey shows a startling lack of knowledge about the Holocaust as we get further away from the actual event.  However, it also shows that there is a desire among Americans to learn more about the Holocaust.  Thus, it is incumbent upon institutions like MIMEH to keep finding ways to offer accurate educational programming to a broad audience in order to bridge the knowledge gap.  In the coming months, MIMEH will be launching several unique programs that aim to reach millennials by providing unique experiences that will speak directly to the younger generation.  We hope to do our part to remedy the lack of knowledge made apparent by the survey and invite you to join us on this increasingly important mission.

Read the full article by Maggie Astor here:

​www.nytimes.com/2018/04/12/us/holocaust-education.html

The Maimonides Institute for Medicine, Ethics and the Holocaust is proud to announce a partnership with CANDLES Holocaust Museum and Education Center, effective February 1, 2018.  CANDLES is a nonprofit organization founded by Holocaust survivor, Mengele twin, and forgiveness advocate Eva Mozes Kor whose mission is to shine a light on the story of the Holocaust and Eva Kor and to illuminate the world with hope, healing, respect, and responsibility.

Ms. Kor's experience as a survivor of Mengele's twin experiments offers a firsthand account of the ways in which the medical community participated in the dehumanization and torture of millions of innocent people during the Holocaust.  We hope to share Ms. Kor's story to help people understand the importance of studying the Holocaust as the historical framework for current issues in modern bioethics, health care policy and medical practice. 
​
MIMEH and CANDLES will be joined in this important endeavor by Misericordia University's Center for Human Dignity in Bioethics, Medicine, and Health.

On January 29, 2018, the Maimonides Institute for Medicine, Ethics and the Holocaust, The Center for Human Dignity in Bioethics, Medicine, and Health at Misericordia University, CANDLES Holocaust Museum and Education Center (founded by Holocaust survivor Eva Mozes Kor), and the Department of Bioethics and the Holocaust of the UNESCO Chair of Bioethics (Haifa) launched an international movement to preserve human dignity in health care.  This full day event held at Misericordia University included lectures by internationally renowned scholars Dr. Susan Miller and Dr. Tessa Chelouche, as well as an interfaith candle-lighting ceremony commemorating the victims of the Holocaust and other instances of abuse perpetrated by the medical community.  The featured event was the launch of the Pledge to Preserve Human Dignity in Health Care, a document which reaffirms our societal commitment to keeping the ethical principles of equality, justice, and dignity at the forefront of health care.  Hundreds of people from over 20 states and 8 countries have signed the document.  

The Center for Human Dignity in Bioethics, Medicine and Health at Misericordia University invites all interested people to the inaugural "Commitment to Preserve Human Dignity in Health Care" event on Monday, Jan. 29 from 5-6:30 p.m. in Lemmond Theater in Walsh Hall.
The highlight of the program is a first-of-its-kind interactive ceremony to Pledge to Preserve Human Dignity in Health Care. Everyone in attendance will be invited to promise to "uphold the values of dignity, equality and justice within health care." Those taking the pledge will receive a pin they can wear to show their respect for the dignity of all patients.

Program sponsors include the Maimonides Institute for Medicine, Ethics and the Holocaust in New Jersey; the Department of Bioethics and the Holocaust of the UNESCO Chair of Bioethics located in Israel; the CANDLES Holocaust Museum and Education Center founded by Holocaust survivor Eva Mozes Kor and located in Indiana; the Ethics Institute of Northeastern Pennsylvania at Misericordia University; and the Medical Health and Humanities program at Misericordia University.

The program includes an ecumenical candle lighting ceremony with representatives of numerous religious traditions to honor victims of medical science, and presentations about medical science and bioethics by two internationally known speakers. The events are timed to commemorate International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Jan. 27. Additional information about the program's schedule is available at https://www.misericordia.edu/page.cfm?p=2336.

"Our program will serve as the start of a movement that aims to reach everyone throughout the world, both those within the health care profession and others," said Stacy Gallin, D.M.H., director of the Center for Human Dignity in Bioethics, Medicine and Health at Misericordia University. "We are asking them to reflect upon what took place during the Holocaust, what has continued to take place, and vow to use those lessons to reaffirm a societal commitment to preserving human dignity in health care around the world.

"To protect the future, we must learn from the past. It is our hope that universities around the world will join us in having students sign the newly developed 'Pledge to Preserve Human Dignity,' much like doctors and nurses do at their white coat and pinning ceremonies," added Gallin, who is known internationally for her work as the director of the Maimonides Institute.

David Rehm, Ph.D., vice president of Academic Affairs at Misericordia, echoes Gallin's comments. "The scholarly literature on medical science has, since at least the 1980s, called for an annual commemoration to reflect upon the responsibilities and challenges of the medical profession. Misericordia is taking the bold step of putting into action this recommendation. We are proud to be hosting this event," he stated.

"These events are the first in a series of programs that will be held in conjunction with the UNESCO Chair of Bioethics and CANDLES to grow the 'Movement to Preserve Human Dignity in Health Care' through various other like-minded national and international organizations," added Gallin. "Being able to hear from two of the most recognized speakers in the world on bioethics will make for a very special launch to the movement."

Tessa Chelouche, M.D., the director of primary care medical practices at Tel Aviv University, an internationally recognized speaker on the subject of medicine and the Holocaust, will serve as keynote speaker. She will present the talk, "Reflecting on the Past to Protect the Future: Medical Ethics and Human Dignity after the Holocaust."

A native of South Africa, Dr. Chelouche immigrated to Israel in 1977, where she practices as a family physician. She graduated from the Sackler School of Medicine at Tel Aviv University Medical School in 1984. Dr. Chelouche teaches family medicine residents for the Tel Aviv University Family Medicine Program. For the past 17 years, she has been teaching and lecturing on the subject of medicine and the Holocaust. Dr. Chelouche has published numerous articles in international medical and law peer-reviewed journals, and has presented at international conferences and medical schools.

In 2013, Dr. Chelouche co-edited the "Casebook on Bioethics and the Holocaust," which was published under the auspices of UNESCO Chair in Bioethics in Israel. She is affiliated with The International Center for Medicine, Law and Ethics at Haifa University. Dr. Chelouche has been the co-director of the Maimonides Institute for Medicine, Ethics and the Holocaust since its inception in 2015. In 2017, she and Dr. Gallin co-founded the Department for Medicine and the Holocaust as part of the UNESCO Chair in Bioethics, Haifa.

In addition, Susan M. Miller, M.D., M.P.H., F.A.C.P., F.A.A.F.P., will attend the pledge event and will present the address, "Medical Experimentation during and after WWII," at a Bring-Your-Own-Lunch lecture at noon in Huntzinger and Alden Trust rooms 218-219 of Sandy and Marlene Insalaco Hall. Both events are free and open to the public. Dr. Miller is the John S. Dunn, Senior Research Chair in General Internal Medicine at the Houston Methodist Research Institute.

Dr. Miller is an associate professor at Weill Medical College, Cornell University. She is a professor in the Department of Family Medicine and a professor of clinical medicine at the Institute of Academic Medicine, Houston Methodist Research Institute. She also serves as the deputy chief in the Department of Family Medicine at The Methodist Hospital. Dr. Miller is currently the senior chair of the Institutional Review Board of the Methodist Hospital Research Institute and is the director of the Chao Program for International Research Ethics.

Dr. Miller has provided consultation work to health care institutions in Central and Eastern Europe, Russia, Cameroon, the Philippines, South Korea, and Monterrey. She is a board member for the Center for Medicine After the Holocaust in Houston and the Maimonides Institute for Medicine, Ethics and the Holocaust. She is a co-founder of the Center for Medicine after the Holocaust-Ukraine, where she is also a board member of the Scientific Council of the Informational Center of Bioethics – Ukraine.

The Center for Human Dignity in Bioethics, Medicine and Health at Misericordia University was established in September. The center fosters the study of medical ethics and the boundaries of medical research practices, and builds on the teachings offered in the university's Medical and Health Humanities Program.
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For more information about the center or the pledge program, please contact Stacy Gallin at sgallin@misericordia.edu or visit www.misericordia.edu/humandignity.