By Rabbi Rachel Esserman

Dr. Eileen M. Angelini will speak at the Jewish Federation of Greater Binghamton’s Yom Hashoah program on Tuesday, April 22, at 6:30 pm, at Temple Concord, 9 Riverside Dr., Binghamton. For more information, see the Federation plans Yom Hashoah program on April 22. 
Dr. Eileen M. Angelini is frequently asked why someone Catholic became a Holocaust scholar and educator. Her answer? “Why do I have to be Jewish to care?” In addition to her research and her speaking engagements about the Holocaust, Angelini is the upstate regional coordinator for 3GNY. That organization serves as “an educational non-profit that brings together 3G’s – third-generation descendants of Holocaust survivors – to educate diverse communities about the perils of intolerance.” 
In an e-mail interview, Angelini spoke about her work at 3GNY. “It is an honor and a privilege for me to serve as the upstate regional coordinator of 3GNY,” she said, noting that “3GNY’s mission of preserving the legacies and lessons of the Holocaust, educating diverse communities about the dangers of intolerance, and providing a supportive forum for the descendants of survivors is one which I wholeheartedly support and to which I have dedicated a very significant portion of my professional career.”
Education plays a major role in her work. “I am responsible for amplifying 3GNY’s impact on students and communities in Onondaga County and across upstate New York,” she noted. “To do this, I create new and recurring speaking opportunities for our volunteer 3G speakers by building and strengthening relationships with schools, BOCES, campus Hillels, teacher networks and other outlets across the region. Additionally, I recruit and engage Jewish 3Gs in upstate communities to develop them as local leaders in Holocaust education. Through these and related tasks, and in coordination with 3GNY staff and volunteers, I enhance the field of Holocaust education in upstate New York and strengthen the community connections among descendants of survivors in the region.”
At the Yom Hashoah event, Angelini will speak about her personal research, the result of which is the documentary “La France divisée/France Divided.” (Selections from the film will be shown during the event.) Her area of expertise is the German occupation of France during World War II. “France was in the unique position of being defeated by the Germans, of being occupied by the Germans, of having collaborated with the Germans and having declared victory over the Germans (France was one of the four Allies with the United States, Great Britain and the former Soviet Union),” she said. “France was a very divided country and was for a long time after the war. This split national identity – the Vichy government of Marshal [Philippe] Pétain on one side, the Free French Forces of General [Charles] de Gaulle on the other – makes the problems of cultural memory relating to the occupation period especially acute. In fact, it was not until 1972 when Robert Paxton, an American and professor of history at Columbia University, wrote ‘Vichy France’ that a whole new period in French historiography began about the occupation years, as well as in the French popular perceptions about this period. ‘La France divisée/France Divided’ explores the occupation period via oral testimony of survivors, hidden children, members of the French Resistance, Righteous Gentiles and historians, allowing us all to have first-hand access to this painful period.”
Angelini added, “Although my degrees are in French studies, my passion is sharing the stories of survivors of the Holocaust. Toward the end of my Ph.D. candidature, which focused on 20th-century French literature, I recognized that there was a significant difference in the style of my authors before and after [World War II]. I, thus, determined that I would explore why this difference was so prominent.” 
It was that work that led Angelini in an unexpected direction. “This exploration led me down the path of interviewing Holocaust survivors, hidden children, members of the French Resistance and Righteous Gentiles,” she said. “I then used these interviews with my students as way of instilling in them this important part of French history. I encouraged students to write letters in French to those who shared their testimonies with me, most especially the survivors. The results were extraordinary as the students worked hard to write empathetic letters and were deeply moved by the letters they received back. The survivors themselves were incredibly grateful that young Americans were interested in what had happened to them and appreciated my efforts to connect them with an interested American audience.”
Those reactions are part of the reason she continued her work in Holocaust education. “I made a promise to all those survivors who shared their oral testimonies with me that they would not be forgotten,” Angelini said. “As my teaching career progressed, I drew upon my background in researching Jewish-Christian relations and documentary filmmaking to teach the Holocaust from an interdisciplinary perspective, helping students understand that the Holocaust is not simply a Jewish question, but one that involves us all, regardless of religion, ethnicity, gender or nationality.”