SYDNEY, Australia (JTA) – A Holocaust center in New Zealand won a national award from the country’s Human Rights Commission.
The Wellington Holocaust Research and Education Center, founded in 2006, received one of 12 New Zealand Diversity Awards, which recognize projects that have made a difference in understanding diversity.
“It is a great honor for the center to receive this national award after only five years of our existence,” said the center’s founding director, Inge Woolf. “Our basic aim has been to tell of humanity lost, of resilience and survival, and to teach tolerance, courage and racial harmony.”
The center teaches the history of the Holocaust through the lives of the survivors and refugees who came to the city. Thousands of schoolchildren have taken part in its programs, which are taught in accordance with the New Zealand school curriculum. The center has also spearheaded the annual observance of U.N. International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Jan. 27 at the Jewish cemetery in Wellington.
There are about 7,000 Jews in New Zealand, mainly in Auckland and Wellington.
