Rebecca Gillette '06 fights Holocaust denial as Hillel president at Harvard

Rebecca Gillette '06 is a senior at Harvard University where she has a concentration in Government and is serving as President of Harvard Hillel.

In September, The Harvard Crimson student newspaper published an advertisement by the Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust, that challenged readers to "provide, with proof, the name of one person killed in a gas chamber at Auschwitz." Rebecca immediately contacted the newspaper's editor requesting that the ad be pulled from future issues and that a formal apology be printed. As a result of Rebecca's efforts, the newspaper published a statement that the ad was printed as a result of "miscommunication and failed oversight". Rebecca was quoted about the incident in articles by the Crimson, CNN and the Jerusalem Post.

As a follow-up, Rebecca organized a discussion at Harvard to increase awareness of Holocaust denial, led by Dr. Deborah E. Lipstadt, a noted Jewish studies scholar who successfully fought libel charges from Holocaust denier David Irving in England. Rebecca introduced the event, which attracted a diverse audience and was covered in an article by The Crimson. The Lipstadt program and discussion become a driving force for a new precedent on the Harvard campus, and Rebecca was invited to speak at a meeting of the Harvard Chaplains about the entire experience.

Rebecca's mother, Ellen Gillette, says, "we are grateful for her years of Jewish Day School education which have given her the tools and understanding to speak the truth."

Rebecca was also interviewed in an article, "Students Talk about Conservative Judaism" in a recent issue of Kolot: Voices of Conservative/Masorti Judaism. She explained that her years at "a community day school based in a modern Orthodox synagogue . . . strengthened my identity as a Conservative Jew, as I embraced my ability to participate as an educated young women who appreciates both the traditional and the contemporary." Rebecca explains that "my quote about pluralism was significantly based on my experiences at BT and has really shaped how I think about Jewish leadership in my own community and how it relates to the community at large."

Rebecca was the recipient of the Beth Tfiloh Dahan Award when she graduated from BT in 2006. She is looking forward to graduating from Harvard in May 2010 and is interested in pursuing a career in non-profit management. Her brother, Aaron, graduated from Beth Tfiloh in 2009 and her mother, Ellen, is a member of our school's Board of Trustees.