How do feel about some folks who are monopolizing the Holocaust for political, military, and financial gain?
To wit:
Preparing teachers to impart Holocaust's tough lessons
Sunday, January 15, 2006
BY KATHLEEN G. SUTCLIFFE
In the past decade, the study of the Holocaust has grown, taking a place alongside such standard topics as the Magna Carta charter in some public schools.
But it is the quality of the lessons, not just the quantity, that concerns a group of 18 educators holed up at the Hilton Newark Airport hotel this weekend.
"There are some teachers who show 'Schindler's List,' and that's their unit on the Holocaust," said Francine Pfeffer, a Middlesex County Vocational School teacher.
Pfeffer was among the teachers, including two others from New Jersey, attending the three-day seminar sponsored by the Manhattan- based Jewish Foundation for the Righteous.
Traveling from as far away as Washington state, Florida and Alabama, the teachers -- hand-picked by local Holocaust centers -- study with renowned Holocaust scholars from throughout the world.
"It gives you more of a depth to your knowledge," said Charlie "Kip" Altman, an educator at a South Carolina middle school. "When the students have tough questions, you have answers. Or at least know enough to point them in the right direction."
New Jersey has mandated Holocaust education as part of the state K-12 curriculum since 1994. Four other states -- California, Florida, Illinois and New York -- also require teachers to cover the topic, and the Holocaust is explicitly mentioned in the state education standards of 25 other states, according to Stephen Feinberg, Director of National Outreach at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.
All other states, except Iowa, which does not have state education standards, implicitly recommend teaching children about the Holocaust, Feinberg said.
"You would not have found such a thing a few years ago," Feinberg said. "In the last 10 years, we've seen an increase."
PROPER TRAINING IS ESSENTIAL
Feinberg said Jewish Foundation for the Righteous teacher- training seminars are well-regarded in Holocaust study circles.
PROPER TRAINING IS ESSENTIAL
Feinberg said Jewish Foundation for the Righteous teacher- training seminars are well-regarded in Holocaust study circles.
"The issue is not whether or not (the Holocaust is) touched upon, but how prepared educators are," Feinberg said. "Teacher-training programs like the JFR's go a long way toward preparing them."
Without proper training, the lessons of the Holocaust -- the Nazis' systematic killing of more than 6 million Jews before and during World War II -- can be obscured, or their solemnity degraded, said Stanlee Stahl, executive vice president of the Jewish foundation.
Teachers prepared for the weekend by doing advance reading and writing, and all underwent a week of intensive training last spring at Columbia University.
"Everybody who comes to the program is considered a master teacher," Stahl said.
Yesterday, the group spent the afternoon poring over "When Memory Comes," a memoir by Holocaust historian Saul Friedlander. The teachers worked under the direction of Debórah Dwork, a professor of Holocaust history at Clark University and director of the school's center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.
Dwork guided the group through a discussion of Friedlander's history, which begins with his assimilated Jewish family in Prague and winds through France, where he was kept safe from the Nazis in a Catholic seminary. His parents were killed in Auschwitz.
IT 'WASN'T JUST POLAND'
Last year, the group grappled with the question of how a society can turn genocidal. This weekend, educators are examining the role geography played, comparing the different experiences faced by Jews in eastern and western Europe.
"When teachers learn about the Holocaust, they learn about Poland, because that's where the killing was," Stahl said. "But they need to know that the Holocaust wasn't just Poland."
This is the third annual seminar offered by the Jewish Foundation for the Righteous, which was founded in 1986 to recognize non- Jews who risked their lives to rescue Jews during the Holocaust. Today, the foundation provides financial support for 1,400 aged rescuers in 27 countries.
"There's not enough that we in the Jewish community can do to honor Christians who saved Jews," Stahl said.
The teaching seminar is traditionally held over the three-day Martin Luther King Jr. weekend. The reason is part logistical, part symbolic, Stahl said.
"When you think of what Dr. Martin Luther King stood for, it's appropriate," Stahl said. "We're talking about men and women who not only had the courage to care, they had the courage to act."
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