The Jewish Transcript, Seattle, Washington. October 8, 1999
Community News, Page 9
Local artist and educator attends second International Holocaust Conference in Jerusalem
By Nina Rogozen
Special to the Transcript
On Oct. 3, Akiva Segan, a local artist and Holocaust educator, left for the journey of a lifetime. His first visit to Israel includes participation in the "Second International Conference on the Holocaust and Education." He is among many from around the world sharing ideas, stories, classes and creative thinking on how to help communities explore both the horror and lessons of the Holocaust.
The mid-October conference takes place at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, the 45-acre Holocaust memorial established by Israeli law in 1953 on Mount of Remembrance. In the words of their staff, Yad Vashem is "A monument of a nation's grief." The pioneer of Holocaust commemoration, Yad Vashem, has created a "collective memory of the Jewish people and a landmark of the moral history of mankind." Among its many treasures, Yad Vashem houses an archive; library; historical, art, and children's museums; a Hall of Names; and Righteous Among the Nations, a tribute to non-Jews who risked their lives opposing the Nazis.
At the conference, Akiva Segan is joined by an impressive group of other government representatives, professors and educators from the literary, art and cyberspace worlds. Among them, Professor Konrad Kweit from Australia will speak on "The Perpetrators and the Final Solution." Professor David Cesarino from England will speak on "The Holocaust in the Present: Using news stories to explore the history of the Holocaust and its impact since 1945."
Every afternoon will offer workshops for participants to choose from. Segan will not only present his own workshop, "Holocaust Education Through Art - A Slide Presentation," but he can attend others such as "Can We Afford to Stand By?" "Theatre in the Museum - A New Method of Teaching the Holocaust," "The Holocaust Education Center - Japan," "Eyes from the Ashes - Archival Photo as Teaching Tools," "Holocaust Education and Denial in the U.S. Army," " Virtual Reality, Holocaust Education and the Internet," and many more.
Segan has condensed his usual hour-long presentations for fourth-graders through adults to 10 minutes of audiovisual presentation and 35 minutes of dialogue among participants.
His workshop will focus on how Christian Europe and America responded to the Holocaust, how the Nazis used hate and propaganda images to portrays Jews as evil, and how Christian Europe has historically stereotyped Jews, citing Michaelangelo's Moses with horns as an example. Segan's workshop will also deal with racial and ethnic stereotyping in today's films, using "The Indian in the Cupboard" and "True Lies" as examples.
His slide presentation focuses on two artists: Israel Bernbaum a Warsaw-raised refugee (slides used by permission of the Clifton-Passaic Jewish Community Center in New Jersey) and his own, including pieces from his eventual 50 piece project titled "Under the Wings of G-d." It is based less on his more private, spiritual relationship with Judaism, and more on his strong political roots and beliefs.
"I could have done merely aesthetically pleasing work, but I gravitated to this. This particular series has a thread running through it. Its social and political nature brings concepts of King David and Albert Einstein together," reflects Segan. "My work has a large component of social relevancy and activism that all makes sense to me," he adds. His work is meant to celebrate the lives of subjects, not simply mark their deaths. Most of the projects images are based on historical photos with early inspiration by Bernbaum.
Segan's value of the individual was present in his earliest work, as in his mother and child tempera painting from the fourth grade, selected for a city-wide art exhibit at Lever House in Manhattan. That small success began his journey as an artist, leading him to major in art in college, and years later, to begin his "Under the Wings" series.
Another major inspiration for his work will be integrated into his participation at the conference. When in Europe some years back, Segan found that "I couldn't go anywhere without thinking about the Holocaust. It all affected me tremendously."
A beautiful old German train station conjured up images of large Nazi swastika banners in the 1930's, waving troops and prisoners through. These images led him to ponder how teachers of today are addressing neo-Nazi and white racist hate music groups, hate sites on the internet and Holocaust denial.
He hopes that his work will keep the spirit of those who died alive, creating a beacon of remembrance as those who survived to tell the stories die out.
Segan believes the lessons of the Holocaust are universal and hopes the conference will reflect that belief. He wants his listeners to understand that the Holocaust contained many issues of conscience, on the part of many. The choices people made back then are important to the concept of choices today and the development of an equitable world.
Following the conference at Yad Vashem, Segan takes his lecture/presentation to Brighton, England, to speak to students and faculty at the Centre for German - Jewish History, University of Sussex, and the Department of Education to history teachers-in-training.
~
(The article, published hardcopy, included a reproduction of UTW 27, captioned:
Akiva Segan © 1999 from his Under the Wings of G-d series.
Pictured is Mordecai
Anielewicz, leader of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising)