Award for Wellington Holocaust Centre
The Wellington Holocaust Research and Education Centre has received a a New Zealand Diversity Awards from the Maori King.
Inge Woolf and Maori King Tuheitia Paki Pic: Human Rights Commission copyright
The award presented by the Maori King (Tuheitia Paki), was accepted by the Centre’s founding director, Mrs Inge Woolf at this year’s National Diversity Forum in Hamilton.
The awards recognise projects and initiations undertaken by organisations throughout New Zealand that have made a difference in understanding diversity.
“It is a great honour for the Centre to receive this national award after only five years of our existence,” said Mrs Woolf. “Our basic aim, from the very beginning, has been to tell of humanity lost, of resilience and survival, and to teach tolerance, courage and racial harmony.”
As the citation explained, the Wellington Holocaust Research and Education Centre teaches the history of the Holocaust through the lives of the survivors and refugees who came to Wellington. Through those stories, the Holocaust Centre creates an understanding of the need to preserve the human rights of all, and to respect the difference that each individual brings to their society and to the country in which they live.
In the nearly five years it has been operating thousands of schoolchildren have taken part in their programmes, which are taught in accordance with the New Zealand school curriculum.
The Holocaust Centre has also spearheaded the annual observance of United Nations International Holocaust Remembrance Day on 27 January, a moving ceremony, held at the Jewish Cemetery at Makara (Wellington), that has grown each year.
Later this year the Wellington Holocaust Centre will become the Holocaust Centre of New Zealand and its reach will extend to the whole country.
