(NY Jewish Week) At the Brooklyn Amity School, a majority-Muslim private school in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, high school students are taking part in a new Holocaust education initiative with an unlikely ambassador: NBA center and free agent Enes Kanter Freedom.
Kanter Freedom, who is Muslim, grew up in Turkey and played for five different NBA teams between 2011 and 2022. Over the last couple of years, he has become outspoken about human rights violations in Turkey and other parts of the world, including China, whose treatment of the Muslim Uighur people has been described by the U.S. State Department as genocide.
The Holocaust education program being taught at Amity is underwritten by The Blue Card, a non-profit that assists Holocaust survivors, and the Turkish Cultural Center of New York. The curriculum was created by Mehnaz Afridi, a professor at Manhattan College who directs its Holocaust, Genocide & Interfaith Education Center.
