Rhode Island Holocaust Education and Resource Center/URI Providence Campus

Collaborative Education Program Spring 2014

The URI Providence Campus Arts and Culture Program will offer the production of “Trust in the Journey: Becoming Family – Marie, Jeannette and Ruth” by Frank V. Toti, Jr. from April 7-11.  The play was written from original oral history testimony of three Rhode Island women. Marie and Jeannette were hidden children and became the first refugee children to come to Rhode Island, and Ruth Goldstein is their foster sister.  All three share their story in Holocaust Education programs in Rhode Island and St. Petersburg, Fla., classrooms.  The play is a more complete and dramatized rendering of their narrative with projected photographs and maps.

This production will be presented on three mornings at the URI Providence Campus in the Paff Auditorium (seating recommended under 300), and there will be one performance at a Rhode Island high school – potentially Rogers High School in Newport. There will also be free performances for the general public at URI Providence Campus from April 4-6.

The project will also include “Fragments: Portraits of Survivors…,” photographs by Jason Schwartz, in an exhibit from April 1-30 at the URI Providence Campus 1st and 2nd Lobby Gallery. These photographs were created and circulated by the Florida Holocaust Museum, St. Petersburg, Fla. 

The exhibit includes 115 survivor portraits (contemporary images) with carefully worded statements by each individual survivor and additional photographs of several of them during the time of the Holocaust. We will be working with the Florida Holocaust Museum to display these images of the survivors as children or youth alongside their contemporary images (then and now) to make it clearer to contemporary youth that, in fact, the now elders were young during the Holocaust. The exhibit also includes maps. The URI Providence Campus Arts and Culture Program will develop a study guide with additional materials, discussion questions and bibliography to accompany the exhibit and production.

The exhibit is open to the public, and there will be public performances along with the educational performances arranged with URI Providence Campus Arts and Culture Program.

Reservations for school groups to attend weekday performances and the exhibit will be arranged through the Rhode Island Holocaust Education and Resource Center.  Call 401-277-5206 for more information.