St. Thomas School of Law's Intercultural Human Rights Program Partners With Holocaust Documentation & Education Center

MIAMI, Feb. 8, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Miami's St. Thomas University's School of Law (www.stu.edu), internationally recognized for its Intercultural Human Rights Programs has partnered with the Holocaust Documentation and Education Center, for a most distinguished presentation on campus February 16, 2012 on the occasion of the Holocaust Documentation and Education Center's 32nd Annual Meeting. Media members and the South Florida community are invited to attend the event that features one of the most renowned prosecutors of Nazi war crimes - Mr. Eli Rosenbaum, Director of Human Rights Enforcement Strategy & Policy, United States Department of Justice.

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Under the direction of Professors Siegfried Wiessner and Roza Pati, the LLM. / J.S.D. programs have flourished and eminent scholars from around the globe have visited the Miami Catholic, private university. This time, cooperating with Hon. Rositta Ehrlich Kenigsberg, President of the Holocaust Documentation and Education Center, St. Thomas hosts Mr. Eli Rosenbaum, who is the longest serving prosecutor and investigator of Nazi criminals in history, having worked on these cases at the U.S. Department of Justice for more than 30 years.

A graduate of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and the Harvard University Law School, since 1994, he has served as Director of the Justice Department's Office of Special Investigations (OSI), which investigates and prosecutes WWII era Nazi criminals and their Axis allies. Under Mr. Rosenbaum's leadership, OSI has been called "the most successful government Nazi hunting organization on earth" (ABC News) and "the world's most aggressive and effective Nazi hunting operation" (The Washington Post). Mr. Rosenbaum's published works include Betrayal: The Untold Story of the Kurt Waldheim Investigation and Cover Up (St. Martin's Press), which was selected for "Notable Books of 1993" by the New York Times Book Review and "Best Books of 1993" by The San Francisco Chronicle.

Media and the general public are invited. For additional information, please contact Professor Roza Pati, at 305.474.2447 or [email protected] or Hon. Rositta Kenigsberg at 954 929 5690 or [email protected] .

Thursday, February 16, 2012, 10:30 a.m. to noon
St. Thomas University, George & Evelyn Goldbloom Convocation Hall
16401 NW 37th Avenue, Miami Gardens, FL

About the Holocaust Documentation and Education Center:

The Holocaust Documentation and Education Center, founded in 1980 as a nonsectarian, non-profit, multifaceted organization is in the midst of building the first South Florida Holocaust Museum, which will become the first in the country to tell the story in English and Spanish.

Over the years the Center has achieved international acclaim and recognition for maintaining the largest, self-produced, standardized Oral History Library Collection. Spielberg's Shoah Foundation, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Raoul Wallenberg Project, and the Simon Wiesenthal Center are among the prestigious organizations that have all sought the Holocaust Documentation and Education Center's expertise in developing their oral history projects. The Center continues to seek eyewitnesses, survivors, liberators, and rescuers, to videotape their stories to become part of the museum. The Center is also collecting artifacts from the Holocaust including documents and photographs.

The most profound and proudest achievement of the Center, which took over a decade to accomplish, continues to impact the lives of all Florida students from K-12: in 1994 when Governor Lawton Chiles signed Florida State Statute 1003.42 into law. As a result, today Holocaust education is mandated so that all students regardless of race, color and creed will have the opportunity to learn that promises of Never Again are empty and meaningless if we remain silent and indifferent in the face of any hatred and bigotry.

The Center's Educational Outreach Department provides various programs for students and teachers including Student Awareness Days (our prejudice reduction program), an annual university-accredited Teacher Institute on Holocaust Education, an Annual Visual Arts & Writing Contest, Annual 'A Simple Act of Kindness Contest', and a Speakers' Bureau. Its Reference & Research Library houses 5,000+ volumes of Holocaust-related books, journals, videos, DVDs and more. The library is open to teachers, students, researchers, historians and the general public Monday through Friday, 9 AM to 5 PM, by appointment. The Center also presents a Meet the Author Series and International Series every month, from October to April. Website is www.hdec.org; Facebook at www.facebook.com/hdecm, and Twitter www.twitter.com/sfhdec.

SOURCE St. Thomas University