West Hartford interactive program aims to reduce antisemitism, racism
About a hundred people came out for an interactive educational program that aims to reduce antisemitism and bias in West Hartford Thursday evening.
The Morris and Judy Sarna Breaking Bias & Creating Community Program is being presented in schools in the Greater Hartford area. Teachers partner with the Neag School of Education at UConn to come up with material that will teach students how to reduce racism, antisemitism, and other hatred.
“One student at a time,” Alan Marcus, a professor in the Neag School of Education, said. “If you can get a student to start thinking about their own biases and how they treat other people, and listening to other people and hearing other perspectives, that can make a difference in society.”
The public was invited to check out the program at the West Hartford Town Hall.
Sen.r Richard Blumenthal (D) was invited and spoke to the crowd about coming together after hate incidents, like the attack at the Michigan synagogue.
“As repugnant as acts of hatred are, we need to be aware of them and counter them, fight them and unite as a community,” Blumenthal said. “We need to join hands and arms and hearts in the way that these students have done to raise awareness and fight hate.”
The program on display in the town hall featured a photo exhibit of West Hartford community members wearing various outfits as an exercise in exploring identity.
To help students understand and get to know Holocaust survivors, they had the opportunity to ask questions through an interactive digital testimony.
Through virtual reality, five survivors shared their stories and took the audience to scenes of the Holocaust, like Auschwitz.
Arta Soroush, an Iranian student, said the history sounded like the ongoing US-Israel War.
“It feels a lot like what we’re going through as a country and as people and how our government was against us, in my opinion,” she said. “I feel like it was a lot like that because it made me connect to the fear.”
Organizers are planning to take the program to other schools in the Greater Hartford Region in the coming years.
The program is named after Morris and Judy Sarna. The couple became involved after a rise in antisemitism and racism they were seeing around the world.
Morris Sarna, who passed away at age 97, was imprisoned in a series of Nazi concentration camps for four years starting at age 12. He and three brothers survived concentration camps, but their parents and two youngest brothers were killed while imprisoned.
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