- We are honored to be joined by Irvin Moreno-Rodriguez who's director of the Sara & Sam Schoffer Holocaust Research Center at Stockton University, one of our higher ed partners.

Good to see you, Irvin.

- Thank you for having me, Steve.

It's an honor and a pleasure.

- Well, it's mutual.

The website's up.

Tell everyone what the center is and why it's so significant.

- Absolutely.

The Sara & Sam Schoffer Holocaust Resource Center is the most active Holocaust resource center in the State of New Jersey.

Every year, we host over 400 different programs, events, and activities where we focus on the philosophy of town and gown.

And what does that mean?

It means that our education should extend beyond the university walls where we have community members, faculty, staff, students learning together about the Holocaust and other genocides so that we can make this world a better place for all.

- Irvin, your personal story is fascinating to me.

You did your graduate work at Stockton in the field of Holocaust and genocide studies.

You're the first Latino to ever head a Holocaust resource center in the entire country.

Why the fascination and the concern about the Holocaust?

- Well, it's really a passion, and I understand how important- - That's a better word than mine.

Thank you.

- It's an important education.

It's an important history.

And it actually started in seventh grade.

And I want to just remember my good friend, Betty Grebenshikoff, who was the first Holocaust survivor that I met in seventh grade at Ventnor Middle School.

And although at that point, I didn't remember much about her story, I do remember her talking about being a new American, learning a new language, a new culture.

And this, I empathized with her because as a new American, you know, I'm a child of immigrants, immigrants from Mexico.

I finally, at seventh grade, realized that there was someone out there that understood what I was going through, the challenges and obstacles of being a new American.

- By the way, Betty reunited with her childhood best friend, Ana María, after decades of believing that the other one was dead.

Explain Betty's connection to the Holocaust.

- Absolutely.

So Betty was a young Jewish girl in Berlin, Germany who had a best friend.

After Kristallnacht, her family, her parents found refuge in a place known as Shanghai.

At that point, it was occupied by Japan, and Shanghai was offering visas to Jews trying to flee Germany.

In Shanghai, they found this refuge, they found this safety, and then they were able to finally, after the war, immigrate to Australia and then from Australia, the United States.

But as a young girl in Berlin, Betty had a best friend, Anna Marie.

And for a long time, as she lectured to thousands, to tens of thousands of students, she would always end her presentation by asking the students, "If you know of an Anna Marie, let me know because that could be my best friend."

And for years, for decades, Betty and others in the field thought that Anna Marie was just a victim of the Holocaust, unfortunately.

- Right.

- But they reunited in 2021 for the first time, not Anna Marie, but Ana María who found safety and refuge in the country of Chile.

- You know, by the way, go on our website.

It's up right now at SteveAdubato.org.

Check out the interview we did with Maud Dahme.

Maud, you're smiling 'cause you know who Maud is.

Maud- - Absolutely.

- a child of the Holocaust.

I believe she was seven years of age with her younger sister who I think was five.

Check out Maud's story, so many others.

We do the best we can, Irvin, to try to share stories with... There are very few Holocaust survivors still alive.

Why is the work... And by the way, tell everyone who Sara and Sam Schoffer, who they are and why they matter because without them, this wouldn't exist at Stockton.

- Absolutely.

So our center was founded in October 2nd of 1990.

And that's an interesting story in itself because it was the Holocaust survivors of Southern New Jersey that approached our then president of Stockton, President Vera King Farris, who was the first African American woman to lead a college or university in New Jersey.

But in 2007, the center was rededicated to Sara and Sam Schoffer, who were Holocaust survivors from Vilna, at that point, Poland, now Lithuania, who actually escaped through the sewer system from the ghetto to join this partisan fighting unit in the forest and survive the Holocaust.

They, again, survived.

They immigrated to Atlantic County where they actually owned multiple poultry farms in our area.

- And by the way, check out our interview with President Joe.

And he still goes by President Joe, right?

The president at Stockton.

- Yes.

- A very engaging leader in higher education.

Check out that interview.

But I'm curious about this.

What the heck is the connection, Irvin, between the Holocaust, Holocaust survivors who wind up in South Jersey?

- Absolutely, Steve.

First and foremost, what I like to remind our students and our community is that the story of Holocaust survivors in Southern New Jersey is very much a story of immigration.

And believe it or not, we have a Holocaust Survivors of South Jersey Project where we have been documenting all of the Holocaust survivors that lived here in Southern New Jersey, and over 70% of them, over 70% of Holocaust survivors owned and operated a poultry farm here in our area.

And the question always becomes, when we interview Holocaust survivors, "Why did you go into poultry farming, into chicken farming?"

And they always like to tell the joke, and the joke is, "Well, what languages do chickens speak?"

And the reality is, you didn't need to know English to start and operate a poultry farm.

Eventually, the survivors did, but poultry farming offered an independent way of life away from the big city, the terrible living and working conditions.

And raising a family here in Southern New Jersey was important to them, that fresh air, that independent way of life, and also giving their children an opportunity to go to college.

- Before I let you go, what has been the greatest impact for you, not just academically, scholarly, professionally, but also personally?

- Well, Steve, what I like to tell our educators, our community members, is we're all planting seeds to a forest that we may never see.

And the true purpose of teaching the lessons and legacies of the Holocaust is not simply to prevent another, but it is to instill the lessons to our students that one person can make a difference and to empower them and to let them know that that person can most definitely be you.

That is how we make this world a better place for all.

And often what I say, during atrocities and genocides, it's often the ordinary that becomes extraordinary during times of crisis.

- Irvin, I want to thank you and our partners again in higher ed down at Stockton University for doing important work.

Irvin, thank you very much.

We'll have you back again.

- Thank you.

- You got it.

I'm Steve Adubato.

That's Irvin Moreno-Rodriguez down at Stockton University.

We'll be right back.

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