Joshua Gottlieb, a third year BA (Hons) in Comparative Literature and Philosophy student, has won the ‘Outstanding Achievement Award’ at the Kent Union awards for his work on the Holocaust Memorial Week.
The Holocaust Memorial Week was organised by students from the Comparative Literature module The Shoah in Literature, Film and Culture, convened by Dr Axel Stähler in cooperation with the Holocaust Educational Trust, the Kent Jewish Society, and the Kent Union.
Joshua was part of a team of students who decided to organise an event to commemorate Holocaust Memorial Day, which after a flurry of ideas became a week of events including a talk by holocaust survivor Joan Slater, a film festival and the launch of an online journal consisting of short essays, reviews, historical articles and interviews.
Joshua’s contribution to the online journal involved interviewing three Holocaust survivors. He recorded their memoirs on tape and transcribed the entire audio interviews from French to English, he then selected the key passages for use in the online journal; agonising over what to leave out, so as not to misrepresent the survivors testimony.
He was also heavily involved in arranging and promoting the talk by Holocaust survivor Joan Salter, creating a Facebook event to advertise the talk, informing the local Jewish community of the event, arranging and reporting on meetings with Joan and the Holocaust Educational Trust, creating poster advertising; as well as introducing Joan Salter’s talk and talking at the journal launch event.
Almost 500 people attended the talk by Joan Salter, filling the largest lecture theatre on campus. Joshua said ‘This was an important project, both personally, because of the lessons it taught me about group work, event management and the difficulties of representation; more broadly, because of the educational value of Joan Salter’s talk and the legacy of the online journal’
Joshua did all this while continuing his studies, producing his own blog featuring audio interviews with philosophers, and securing a postgraduate place at Cambridge University.