Holocaust Education, Daffodil Project Events to take Place Sunday

On Sunday, Nov. 18, 2018, at 1 p.m. the community is invited to join in an afternoon of Holocaust education.

Samantha Krantz founded the local Daffodil Project in 2016.

A ceremony will be held in Arnold Hall of the Sylvia Vlosky Yaschik Jewish Studies Center at 96 Wentworth Street, with a private planting of daffodil bulbs to follow. The theme of the event will be “rescue.” Scheduled speakers include Holocaust survivors, second-generation survivors, as well as student representatives. The subsequent daffodil planting is open only to College of Charleston students, Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim (KKBE) members and KKBE religious school families.

The Holocaust was the catastrophic murder of eleven million human beings between 1938 and 1945 throughout Nazi Germany, German-occupied territories and territories held by allies of Nazi Germany. Six million of those victims were Jewish. Five million others were murdered for their religious beliefs, political views, sexual orientation, or physical and mental disabilities.

After discovering her family’s own history with the Holocaust, and traveling to Eastern Europe in the summer of 2016 with College of Charleston Zucker/Goldberg Professor of Holocaust Studies Theodore Rosengarten, Honors College student Samantha Krantz was empowered to bring her experience back to the Lowcountry as the recipient of the Klaper Fellowship in Jewish Studies, which charges recipients with bettering the Lowcountry. As a result, Krantz in fall 2016 launched a local version of the Daffodil Project, a worldwide initiative that aspires to build a Living Holocaust Memorial by planting 1.5 million daffodils around the world to remember the children who perished at the hands of the Nazis. In 2018 Krantz formed the Holocaust Education Committee to bring Holocaust awareness and education to students of all backgrounds.

“By planting daffodils throughout Charleston alongside my classmates, local community members, and Holocaust survivors, it was my intent, and that of the Daffodil Project, to create a living memorial of flowers so that residents and visitors to Charleston may be further inclined to learn about the Holocaust, and its connection to Charleston,” says Krantz. “Now more than ever, it is important to remember those who took great risks in order to rescue others.”

College of Charleston student Maddie Grosoff will lead the Daffodil Project on campus when Krantz graduates in the Spring.

“This year’s theme of “rescue” pertains to each individual’s story, thus relating to the masses,” says Grosoff. “Whether one was rescued by an individual, were themselves a rescuer or “righteous gentile,” or were rescued by faith, this theme illustrates the importance of helping one other to promote a positive future.”