Preparing
teachers to impart Holocaust's tough
lessons
Sunday, January 15, 2006 • BY
KATHLEEN G. SUTCLIFFE • Star-Ledger
Staff
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.
"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."
© 2006 The Star-Ledger. Used by NJ.com with
permission.
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