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Menzer named to board of South Carolina Council on the Holocaust


Last updated June 26, 2018

By Tina Underwood

Furman University English professor Melinda Menzer has been appointed to the board of the South Carolina Council on the Holocaust.

The South Carolina Council on the Holocaust was established by the South Carolina Legislature in 1989. Its mission is to develop an educational program aimed at preventing future atrocities similar to the systematic genocide of six million Jews and others by the Nazis. The program is designed to honor the survivors of the Holocaust and their descendants, and the South Carolinians and their descendants who participated in the liberation of the concentration camps.

Menzer joined the Furman faculty in 1996. She became active in Holocaust education following her travels to Lithuania to see the places where her family lived and where they were murdered during World War II. Menzer has written about her family’s Holocaust tragedy for local news outlets and has given talks about their experience at schools, libraries, synagogues and museums in the Upstate.

Menzer received her bachelor’s from Williams College and her master’s and doctorate degrees from the University of Texas at Austin. She teaches courses at Furman in linguistics and early medieval texts, as well as a first-year writing course entitled “Who Speaks Bad English?” She serves as chair of the social action committee at Temple of Israel where she regularly teaches Hebrew at the religious school.

The South Carolina Council on the Holocaust plans annual observances of the Holocaust and maintains a Holocaust Virtual Library as a digital information resource. For more information about the Council, visit the group’s website at www.scholocaustcouncil.org. Or contact the Furman News and Media Relations office at 864-294-3107.

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