Yessica San Román: Centro Sefarad-Israel and Holocaust Education in Spain
ENGLISH CORNER, CON LINDA JIMÉNEZ – This week’s trivia question: About how many Spanish teachers participate every year in Yad Vashem’s Holocaust teacher-training program?
In Europe Holocaust Memorial Day is commemorated on January 27, to coincide with the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. However, Israel commemorates Yom HaShoa, Holocaust Remembrance Day, on the 27th day of the month of Nisan — a week after the end of the Passover holiday and a week before Yom Hazikaron, the Memorial Day for Israel’s fallen soldiers. The date was chosen to coincide with the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising in 1943.
This year, to coincide with Yom Ha-Shoah, we are speaking with Yessica San Román, who is in charge of the Holocaust and Antisemitism Department of Centro Sefarad-Israel in Madrid. Among other activities, the department organizes seminars, workshops and exhibitions, often in cooperation with international institutions such as Yad Vashem in Jerusalem and the House of the Wannsee Conference in Berlin. However, in this program Yessica will tell us about what is perhaps their most important activity: teacher training in Holocaust education.