The greater Tulsa community is invited to the 27th Annual Yom HaShoah Interfaith Holocaust Commemoration. The program features keynote speaker Distinguished Professor Emerita of Holocaust & Genocide Studies at Stockton University, Carol Rittner, RSM, Ph.D. This year’s theme, Lessons from the Holocaust: Protecting Each Other in Perilous Times, focuses our attention on our responsibilities in the present, asking our community of friends and neighbors to remember what happened then so that we can be attentive to how we live and relate to others now.
The program includes the artwork from, and announcement of the winners in, the annual Yom HaShoah student art competition, a candle lighting ceremony, and the mobile library with Holocaust resources available for checkout from Tulsa City-County Library.
The program is free and open to the public.
Beginning in 1984, Professor Rittner worked with Elie Wiesel, then-chairman of the US Holocaust Memorial Council in Washington, DC, where she organized international Holocaust conferences. After Wiesel received the 1986 Nobel Peace Prize, he established The Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity in New York City. The following May, he invited Rittner to be its first Director where she remained until the end of 1990. The next year, she was appointed to the staff of The Inner City Trust in Londonderry/Derry, Northern Ireland, where she continued to organize international conferences to combat hate.
In 1994, Professor Rittner was invited to be the Ida E. King Distinguished Visiting Scholar in Holocaust Studies at The Richard Stockton College (now Stockton University) of New Jersey. In 1995 she was appointed distinguished professor of religious studies at Stockton and four years later was named distinguished professor of Holocaust & genocide studies. Between 2002 and 2015, she directed the undergraduate minor in that department, and between 2006 and 2008, she was also the director of that master’s program. In September 2009, she was named The Dr. Marcia R. Grossman Professor in Holocaust Studies. She “retired” from Stockton University in 2015. In the spring of 2016, she was a distinguished visiting professor of Holocaust & genocide studies at Seton Hill University, Greensburg, PA, and that summer was a visiting adjunct professor in Holocaust studies at The College of St. Elizabeth, Morristown, NJ. After retiring, Professor Rittner continued to teach online graduate courses for Stockton’s MA program in Holocaust and genocide studies.
Published widely for her Holocaust studies, the professor has lectured widely in the US as well as in Australia, Cambodia, Canada, Israel, Ireland, England, Sweden, Palestine, France, and South Africa.
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