The Greater Lafayette Holocaust Remembrance Committee (GLHRC) has presented the Engel Award to Southwestern Middle School Choir Director Camden Ritchie. Ritchie’s project, “Reviving Voices from the Holocaust," will allow her students to interact with a world-renowned musicologist of the Holocaust, Francesco Lotoro.

Classes will study and prepare music that Lotoro has curated and arranged for them. Students will draw connections between themselves and the people of the Holocaust, then perform and share what they have learned in a public concert.

“I know that after a year of struggle our students and community will be able to draw connections with this material that will hopefully change their lives and the way they view the world,” says Ritchie. “It seems impossible that the human spirit could triumph through music during the Holocaust against such insurmountable odds, but it did. This is how we should aspire to be, remembering and honoring struggles and tragedies of the past as we work together to build our own collective futures.”

GLHRC provides grants to help facilitate teaching about the Holocaust or related ideas, such as cultural diversity and civic engagement.