Teachers see Holocaust education as orientation to civic responsibility

On Board Online • July 23, 2018

By Eric D. Randall
Editor-in-Chief

and

Merri Rosenberg
Special Correspondent

The philosopher George Santayana famously said that those who do not remember the past "are condemned to repeat it." Let's hope that's not always true, because here's a sobering statistic: 22 percent of Millenials haven't heard of the Holocaust.

Asked what Auschwitz was, 66 percent of Millenials and 41 percent of all U.S. adults could not identify it as a concentration camp, according to the 2018 Holocaust Knowledge and Awareness Study.

While the word "holocaust" refers to devastation by fire, "the Holocaust" refers to the state-sponsored murder of six million Jews by the government of Nazi Germany and its collaborators. Also targeted by the Nazis were Roma (Gypsies), homosexuals, the disabled and political opponents.

New York is one of eight states that have laws requiring schools to teach about the Holocaust or genocide.

Middle and high school teachers say they have no trouble getting students interested in the subject. The Nazi regime usually is discussed as a cautionary tale about what can happen when bigotry becomes an organizing principle of a government.

"It's a starting point to talk about human rights in general," said William Zimpfer, an English teacher at the Southern Cayuga Central School District, located in the Finger Lakes. He was the 2018 winner of the State Education Department's Louis E.Yavner Teacher Award, which honors teachers who educate others about the Holocaust and other human rights violations.

"We made a very distinct parallel between what happened to the Jews and Japanese internment [during World War II], and stereotypes, like those [used] today to isolate the Islamic community," he said.

Holocaust museums say they are seeing plenty of school groups. Teachers sometimes tell museum officials that they planned the trip in reaction to some troubling event in school.

"More teachers are coming to us when there are incidents of anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant or anti-Muslim [comments]," said Elizabeth Edelstein, vice president for education at Manhattan's Museum of Jewish Heritage - A Living Memorial to the Holocaust. "We're teaching about the Holocaust but hope that, at the end of the tour, students can see implications for their own lives."

According to the website of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., visiting the museum helps students understand:

• The Holocaust occurred because individuals, organizations and governments made choices that legalized discrimination, which led to specific groups of people being isolated, marginalized and - ultimately - the victims of mass murder.
• Silence and indifference to the suffering of others, or to the infringement of civil rights in any society, can - however unintentionally - perpetuate these problems.
• Democratic institutions and values are not automatically sustained, but need to be appreciated, nurtured and protected.

When students learn about the Holocaust, they start thinking about the kind of society they want to live in, said Mara Koven-Gelman, executive director of the Holocaust Resource Center of Buffalo, a speakers' bureau and teacher training center. "It's so beyond Jewish issues."

'Don't be a bystander'

"We take the New York State mandate to teach the Holocaust very seriously," said Stephanie Catania, a social studies teacher in Somers Central School District in Westchester County.

Catania has students read the United Nations' Universal Declaration on Human Rights, a post-war statement of values that says no one should be enslaved or tortured, and that all human beings have a right not to be politically disenfranchised. That has prompted 12th grade civics students to discuss "taking a knee" protests.

She also teaches an elective class on human rights. It includes lessons about the 1915 Armenian genocide in the Turkish Empire and the Cambodian genocide carried out by the Khmer Rouge from 1975 to 1979.

Catania is one of many New York State educators who see teaching about the Holocaust as a calling. Another is Megan Wright, who took a course on literature of the Holocaust while an undergraduate at SUNY-Brockport and now teaches a one-semester elective on the same subject in the Alexander Central School District in Genesee County.

Wright has her students study three books in depth - Maus by Art Spiegelman; The Sunflower by Simon Wiesenthal, and We Are Witnesses: Five Diaries of Teenagers who Died in the Holocaust, by Jacob Boas.

Her sophomore students take a three-day trip to Washington, D.C., where they go to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. And every other year, teachers take a group of students, some with their family members, to Europe. They visit concentration camps, as well as the remains of the Warsaw Ghetto and Hitler's Eagle's Nest in Salzburg, Austria.

One theme that Wright emphasizes: don't be a bystander when you see injustice.

"The whole idea is how can you be an 'upstander' today?" said Wright. For instance, "I try to connect the Holocaust to problems of refugees," she said.

For younger students, stories of the Holocaust can be a way to understand key events in World War II as well as an avenue to develop empathy. Recently, fifth graders from the Westfield Academy and Central School in Chautauqua County decided to spread awareness about the Holocaust via a "Life March" through their community. They had been inspired by their teacher, Mike Putney, who read an historical narrative about a Holocaust survivor who managed to survive being incarcerated in 10 different concentration camps.

"Our students are more likely to respond to lessons when they incorporate firsthand experiences," said Barbara Casper, a high school social studies teacher in the Southern Cayuga school district. "They are interested in the decisions individuals choose to make during such difficult times to overcome adverse conditions."

The number of Holocaust survivors who remain alive or physically able to visit classrooms has been declining, which teachers say is a great loss.

"I'm going to get one every year that I can," said Beth Saultz, an English teacher in Putnam County's Mahopac Middle School. "It's super important for kids to meet a survivor."

Many survivor testimonies are available on video. Also, Holocaust education centers have begun recruiting the children and grandchildren of the Holocaust to become re-tellers of survivor's stories.

Students concerned about neo-Nazis

In a class on genocide and human rights in the Bellmore-Merrick Central High School District, students have talked about modern-day Nazi sympathizers, said David Goldberg, a social studies teacher in the Nassau County district. "When Charlottesville happened, there was increased concern about the tenor of conversation in the country and concern about the direction of the country," he said.

At least eight white nationalists ran for public office this year, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center; they won Republican party nominations in at least five state and federal races. For instance, the winner of the Republican primary for Illinois's 3rd Congressional District is Art Jones, who wants to keep Chicago neighborhoods "90 percent white" and has called President Donald Trump a "Jew-loving fool."

His campaign website, http://artjonesforcongressman.com, has a page called "Holocaust?" where he reprints a crudely-designed flyer that states: "There is no proof that such a so-called 'HOLOCAUST' ever took place anywhere in Europe, against the Jews."

He also writes in detail about his view that labeling food as kosher is a "Jewish racket" to "extort money out of the food manufacturers" and funnel money to liberal political causes.

Prominent Republicans have sought to distance themselves and the party from Jones. U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) tweeted on June 29: "This is horrific: An avowed Nazi running for Congress. To the good people of Illinois, you have two reasonable choices: write in another candidate, or vote for a Democrat. This bigoted fool should receive ZERO votes."

Other openly anti-Semitic candidates:

• John Fitzgerald, winner of the Republican primary for California's 11th District seat in Congress, is another Holocaust denier and conspiracy theorist. The headline of his campaign website blog on July 3 was "Why Are Powerful Jews Pushing Mass-Immigration And Forced-Multiculturalism Throughout The U.S. And Europe?"
• Russell Walker, a Republican candidate for the North Carolina House of Representatives, has a personal website that states, "The jews are NOT semitic they are satanic as they all descend from Satan."
• Patrick Little, who unsuccessfully sought the Republican nomination to oppose U.S. Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-Calif), called for a government "free from Jews." He received 54,507 votes in a June primary.

'A unique moment in history'

Some teachers teach the Holocaust as one of many examples of genocide and human rights violations, while others say it deserves a singular focus.

Brett Bowden, a middle school teacher in Westchester's Croton Harmon Central School District, favors the latter. In 2008, he won an award for Holocaust education from the Holocaust & Human Rights Center in White Plains (motto: "Learn from the past, protect the future").

"The Holocaust is a unique moment in history," said Bowden, who has a law degree from Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law/Yeshiva University. "I bristle at lumping it with other things."

He added, "We need to keep the Holocaust special, even as it connects as the wheel of a hub to other events, like the Armenian genocide." Bowden also emphasizes the acts of resistance and defiance that took place, to present a more complex narrative about the Holocaust.

On the other hand, "It's very difficult to teach the history of the Holocaust without (addressing) broader questions," said Yorktown teacher Seth Altman, now in his 19th year of teaching the Holocaust as part of Global History.

Inevitably, students end up trying to relate what they learn about historical events to today's issues, he said. For instance, "Are refugees in 1930 and 'America First' analogous situations?" Altman asked.

Zimpfer, the award-winning teacher in Southern Cayuga, believes students' awareness of the fragility of liberty ought to be tempered with hope. In fact, Zimpfer led a local effort that resulted in his district acquiring one of the most famous symbols of hope - a cutting from the chestnut tree that Anne Frank could see while she was in hiding in Amsterdam, Holland.

The tree was planted in 2014 on the grounds of Southern Cayuga Middle School, where it is protected by a metal fence and surrounded by cobblestones reminiscent of European streets. (Some other locations where cuttings of Anne Frank's tree have been planted are the U.S. Capitol and the World Trade Center site.)

The Southern Cayuga Anne Frank Tree Committee has offered movie nights featuring films relevant to social justice, a community read on particular texts, as well as a panel discussion about immigration and farming.

"The real purpose is to learn from the past and recognize the past when it is in the present," Zimpfer said.