1998

A peaceful demonstration

Local students explore subject through art, music and drama

by Susan Skorupa

A lot of us were decked out in bellbottom jeans and had flowers stuck in our hair the last time as many peace symbols were collected in one place as Viktoria Hertling has gathered.

But the peace symbol - a circle enclosing an inverted "Y" - is a common feature in the art local students have submitted for Festival for Peace '96, an event planned and sponsored by the Center for Holocaust, Genocide & Peace Studies at the University of Nevada, Reno.

GIVE PEACE A CHANCE: Viktoria Hertling, director of the Center
for Holocaust, Genocide & Peace Studies is surrounded by second
graders form Alice Smith elementary School who will be
participating in the Festival.

Hertling is the center director.
Several hundred students from elementary, middle and high schools have contributed posters, photos, songs, poems, dances and raps for the festival, which is planned for May 19 in Wingfield Park.

"It makes my heart bump when I see how conscious kids are at that age," Hertling said. "If we could maintain that consciousness, we would make great strides."

The posters - about 120 of them - represent kids' visions of peace ranging global understanding to neighborhood and racial harmony and environmental protection.

FESTIVAL FOR PEACE '96
-When: 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. May 19.
-Where: Wingfield Park.
-What: An outdoor festival where students perform songs, dances, skits, raps and poems and display their postes, photos and videos.
-Admission: Free.
-Sponsors: Center for Holocaust, Genocide & Peace Studies, University of Nevada, Reno.
-Information: 784-6767

Dances, poems, skits and other performing artwork reflect similar themes of world peace.

"We didn't specify the meaning of peace," Hertling said.

The idea for the peace festival and the student participation evolved from a Concert for Peace where UNR faculty and students performed, Hertling said. The idea was to expand the peace theme and move it off campus.

The peace symbol that appeared on clothing, posters, artwork and other materials in the 1960s and early '70s is a recurring theme among the posters submitted for the festival from kids of all ages.

"It's surprising this peace symbol concept is known among 6- and 7 - year-olds," Hertling said.

"For kids, peace has multiple meanings - save the earth, keep the streets safe, racial harmony. Racial harmony is a very strong theme," she said.

A second-graders interpretation of peace

One poster, from a student at Rita Cannan Elementary School, is a painting of Earth with Peace on Earth lettered inside and costumed children from many lands holding hands around the globe.

A similar poster from a Galena High student depicts different ethnic groups and people wearing eyeglasses and using wheelchairs.

Another Galena High submission uses drawings of two "low rider" cars and the word "peace" in stylized script such as the lettering used in some gang signs.

"Gang writing and signs reflect something extreme, negative," Hertling said. "This turns it into something positive. "

The artwork is "absolutely fantastic," she said. "The heart is there."

Another Galena High poster shows four people holding hands under a rainbow. One of the four is a space alien.

Two students from St. Therese the Little Flower elementary school collaborated on a poster of a cartoon cat wearing gang colors and a spiked collar. The cool kitty is flashing the peace sign. Some students chose photography as the medium of choice to illustrate the idea of peace.

The submissions included a young child sleeping and wrapped in a shawl with one bare foot uncovered. Another closely examines the textures of a metal peace symbol displayed on the flat top of a sawed tree stump.

"The artistic values are different," Hertling said. "Some are young artists speaking. Others, not so artistically inclined, are really thinking on what they want to address. The themes are recurrent. "

Words and music are as important to the creative process for peace as pictures - at least for the area students taking part in Hertling's peace festival.

During the day-long festival, about 11 students will perform their own songs about peace. More than a dozen groups or individuals will dance and five are scheduled to present skits.

Five students have written rap songs about peace that they're scheduled to perform and 17 will recite their own poetry.

"Peace is... something to talk about, something to sing about, something to write about," wrote Jessica Welch, a 9-year-old Alice Maxwell elementary school student. " ...Be kind to the world around you, do something for the world around you, do good things for other people. "

Kitti Sorensen, a 16-year-old Galena High student wrote, " ...that we one day will merge together to a big wholeness of joy and peace. That would be happiness, that would be life, that would be peace."

Rose Gordon's daughter and son both submitted entries to the Festival for Peace. Arriva, 15, a Reno High freshman, will perform her "peace rap" during the celebration.

Twelve-year-old Akeem, a Mendive Middle School seventh grader, wrote a poem and drew a poster."

"The main reason I got my kids involved is to keep them involved in things in the community that are positive," Gordon said. "There are so many things going on and people are always talking about the negative because something is always wrong. This way they can express themselves.

"I try to keep them busy in ways that other teens or young adults can look at and say 'maybe I can do that.' I teach them to get involved," Gordon said. "To do things that will be productive."

Lee Chazen, a director of the Center for Holocaust, Genocide and Peace Studies and world history teacher at Galena High School, is especially involved in the study of peace.

His honors class students work each year on a simulation project involving global challenge and personal decisions to wage war or peace. This year, the students are incorporating participation in the festival as a way to bring the real world into the classroom, Chazen said.

"What I want them to come away with is what it must have felt like to try to have pursued peace in the midst of conflict and how hard that is and how much dedication it takes," he said.

He's impressed with the participation of Galena students in the festival.

"Kids came out of the woodwork with photos, posters and other entries," he said. "The kids are getting real energized by this whole theme of peace. I just never knew they had that much to say."

The peace festival is a celebration, not a contest, Hertling said. All the students who submit work receive a free T-shirt. The performance artists will perform. Those with artwork will see their work displayed.

But it's all part of a process, Hertling said.

"Peace to me is a process not achieved nicely wrapped," she said. "It's continuous. It evolves. I think the peace festival has achieved this.

"The festival is not the end," Hertling said. "It will continue efforts into the next school year.

"Everybody is a winner," she said. "If we have a 7-year-old fumbling with a poem, that does not matter. The importance is that it comes from the heart and plants a seed of peace in the consciousness of the child."

TV SPECIAL ON HOLOCAUST

"Diamonds for a Glass of Water" will be cablecast live from 8 to 10 p.m. Monday from the Sierra Nevada Community Access Television (SNCAT) studio in Reno.

People who are survivors of World War II atrocities, eyewitnesses or liberators in the European theater will appear. The program is co-produced by Reno's Center for Holocaust, Genocide and Peace Studies and SNCAT, in cooperation with local religious, ethnic and educational institutions.

The program will be on Channel 16 of TCI of Reno and Channel 30 on Continental Cable.

The host will be Joseph Andrejchak Galata, retired representative to the United Nations Social Economic Council and chairman of the SNCAT Educational Television Committee and vice-chair of the SNCAT board of directors.

Features scholars will be Dr. Viktoria Hertling, director of the Center for Holocaust, Genocide and Peace Studies, and Dr. Shelly Lescott-Leszczynski, center board member.

Memorial music will be performed by Temple Sinai Reform Choir.

Excerpts from "Memories of the Holocaust," produced by KNPB- TV Channel 5, will be shown.

For 45 minutes during the program, residents can call in and ask questions of the guests.
"We know," said director Carl Pride, "some of the telephone calls may be disturbing. The Holocaust is a disturbing subject, but perhaps at least one phone call will be from a Renoite who is another survivor , eyewitness or liberator of the Holocaust."

Over 6 million Jews, 1 million Gypsies and over 3 million other people- Poles, Ukrainians, Russians, Danes, Baha'is, Jehovah's Witnesses, homosexuals and political activists - perished in Hitler's concentration camps.