Holocaust Memorial Programming

Mission

The mission of the Dr. Talbot Spivak Holocaust Memorial Week at Florida SouthWestern State College is to educate students and the community about the Holocaust, to honor its victims and survivors, to cultivate tolerance, and to promote awareness of modern-day genocide in support of the world's promise of "Never Again."

About the Holocaust

The Holocaust, also called the Shoah, was the genocide of approximately six million European Jews between 1933 and 1945 by the Nazi regime in Germany. The Nazis also systematically persecuted and murdered approximately five million Roma (Gypsies), people of Slavic descent, religious and political dissidents, homosexual Germans, and Germans with mental and physical disabilities.

To learn more about the Holocaust, read Introduction to the Holocaust, provided by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Field of Flags

What is the purpose for the field of flags each year to begin the Dr. Talbot Spivak Holocaust Memorial Week?

It is estimated that 11 Million people (6,000,000 Jewish victims; 5,000,000 non-Jewish victims) were systematically persecuted and murdered by the Nazi regime. Every year to begin Holocaust Memorial Week students of FSW place out 1,100 flags on the Thomas Edison (Lee) Campus in front of the Madeleine R. Taeni Student Services Hall. Each flag represents 10,000 Holocaust victims, this is to give a small scale view of the enormous amount of victims who suffered and perished.