The 2010 Betty and Shmuel Rosenkranz Oration

Holocaust survivor guide, George Ginzburg, opened the evening, recounting his harrowing memories of Kristallnacht. He was followed by Mr Rosenkranz, who spoke about his involvement in Jewish communal life and the inordinate support he received from his late wife, Betty.

In November 2010 the Jewish Holocaust Centre held the well-attended Betty and Shmuel Rosenkranz Oration at the Centre, co-sponsored with the Australia/Israel Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC). The Oration is held annually to honour Shmuel and his late wife, Betty, for their outstanding contribution to the Jewish Holocaust Centre and to the wider Jewish community generally.

This year’s Oration was delivered by the Director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, Dr Piotr Cywiński, who addressed the topic ‘Kristallnacht and Remembrance: The Role of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum’

Dr Cywiński, 38, was born in Warsaw. He was the secretary of the International Auschwitz Council between 2000 and 2006, when he was appointed director of the State Museum of Auschwitz-Birkenau. In 2008 he was named Ambassador of the International Year of Intercultural Dialogue. Last year, the late Polish President, Lech Kaczynski, awarded him the Knight’s Cross of the Poland Reborn.

Dr Cywiński then delivered the Oration, during which he stressed the critical role of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, a monument to the deliberate genocide of the Jews by the Nazi regime and to the deaths of countless others. The Museum not only provides irrefutable evidence of one of the greatest crimes ever perpetrated against humanity, but it also commemorates the strength of the human spirit which, in appalling conditions of adversity, resisted the efforts of the Nazi regime to suppress freedom and commit genocide. However, like our Jewish Holocaust Centre in Melbourne, its role goes beyond memorialisation and fulfils an important function as an educational and research institution.