Irving Berkowitz the new Vice President of academic affairs at Bermuda College has enough great stories to write a New York Times best-selling novel.He has overcome much adversity in his life.Most of his mother’s family was killed in Nazi concentration camps in Germany. He was also raised in a largely black community in Cleveland, Ohio.Despite the odds stacked against him, education gave him the knowledge and skills he needed to break down barriers.Dr Berkowitz arrived to the Island on August 7 and recently began a three-year contract with Bermuda College. His job is to oversee all matters in relation to teaching and learning, like academic policy and programme planning.He sat down with The Royal Gazette to talk about the life experiences that have shaped him and his passion to create a more humane and just world.“The fact that I am Jewish [has shaped me]. I do not conceal that fact, but I also do not wear it on my sleeve, but I am proud to be Jewish.“I am also ready to point out that most of my family were killed in Nazi concentration camps. My aunts, uncles and grandparents were killed in concentration camps. My mother was a survivor of the infamous Auschwitz concentration camp.”Dr Berkowitz described the Holocaust as one of the “darkest moments in human history and certainly in my life history”.He recalled his mother weighed 90lbs and needed to be hospitalised extensively due to malnutrition after leaving the camps set up prior to the Second World War.“She survived because she didn’t have children and could be put to work,” he said.“This wasn’t something I read about, this was something I experienced. My family was deeply affected by that policy of genocide by the Nazi regime.”Dr Berkowitz said being part of an ethnic group that was targeted for extermination, as a matter of public policy, has ignited his passion for human rights.“In my 30-plus years as a professional I have not only led institutions of higher education, I have been a leader in every community in which I have lived and I have received numerous awards for my work in and on behalf of civil rights and social justice.“I have been acknowledged by the Asian, Native American and Black communities. I think they acknowledged, beyond what happened to me, the role I played in affecting change in public policy towards general treatment of people of colour; people who have been historically the victims of prejudice and discrimination.”His life experiences even inspired him to become an associate dean at Norfolk State University, a historically black college in Virginia.“African Americans taught my parents how to speak English when we came to the US in 1951.“I knew when I finished doctoral school I wanted to go to a black college to give something back.”Today he has two post-doctorate degrees in economics and a postdoctoral certificate in higher education leadership from Harvard.He has more than three decades of experience working in colleges and universities in the US including a stint as academic vice president of Lassen College in California.Dr Berkowitz hopes his education and experience will add something of value to the Island while he is here.“Coming here is not only an opportunity for me to learn and grow but to contribute to the dialogue on education policy,” he said.In addition to advocating on behalf of humans, he’s a champion for wolves an animal that has also experienced persecution in the US.A supporter of animal rescue group Wolf Haven, he adopted a full-blooded Alaskan Tundra Wolf named Carpathian, which he lived with for 12 years.The animal, which measured six-and-a-half feet and weighed 155lbs, had been orphaned and couldn’t be reintroduced into a wild pack.Carpathian was allowed to roam through Dr Berkowitz’s acreage in California; and was also allowed in the house.“It was a matter of public policy to exterminate the wolf in the lower 48 states [of America] and they did.“Only in 1995 did they adopt a policy of reintroduction of these natural predators into the ecosystems, so I strangely identified with wolves and wolf society.“And I can tell you that we are learning now wolves are not the demons they’re always made out to be.”Dr Berkowitz has been able to rise above many of the obstacles placed before him and hopes to be an inspiration to others.He said: “I think that is the challenge a lot of us will face in life, how we surmount the obstacles placed before us.“How do we surmount obstacles simply because you are a woman, handicapped or because you are poor. The real test of character is how you overcome adversity and I think it’s a wonderful example to provide to a younger generation.“This is one of the sayings I heard when I was growing up [in a Jewish household] ‘the shoe doesn’t tell a foot how big to grow’. In the same way our imagination isn’t limited by our two ears.”