Dr. Karen Shawn, visiting associate professor of Jewish education at Yeshiva University's Azrieli Graduate School of Jewish Education and Administration, presented and participated in a morning-long session focusing on research about the oral testimonies of child Holocaust survivors during the World Congress of Jewish Studies on August 1. The session was sponsored by the Oral History Division of the Avraham Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry of Hebrew University, under the direction of Dr. Sharon Kangisser Cohen.

Dr. Karen Shawn (center) with researchers at the session.

The gathering, which followed presentations at the Congress about the Kestenberg Archives, offered new material and insight for Shawn, who was specially invited as the editor of PRISM: An Interdisciplinary journal for Holocaust Educators by Dr. Cohen and Dr. Eva Fogelman, director of the Kestenberg Foundation for the Study of the Organized Persecution of the Child. In a closed session at the Institute of Contemporary Jewry, Shawn and the researchers brainstormed ways in which their work could be presented to the PRISM audience. Shawn presented each of the five journal issues, along with its genesis and vision and an explanation of its thematic and pedagogic approach. The material presented at the conference will comprise the entire eighth issue of PRISM.  In addition, Shawn has been invited to convene and chair a panel for the first international conference in the field of oral history, which  will examine areas of study including immigration, trauma, culture and identity, human rights and the Holocaust.