Holocaust Education
The following email is from Holly Mjaanes, a former middle school teacher in whose school I had the privilege for many years of sharing my Holocaust experiences and messages of tolerance and respect.
As you will see in the accompanying YouTube video, produced by Rhonda Fink-Whitman, many of our children are growing up without learning about the Holocaust. Those of us who are still teaching the Holocaust can do so for only a few more short years.
We must get the Holocaust into the curriculum of every school in the United States. We must learn about the genocide that continues unabated in the world around us.
Thank you for reading Holly`s letter below, and then watching the YouTube video.
“ I`m not proud, but I`m glad to know that I exposed my students to the word Holocaust, reading and viewing The Diary of Anne Frank, reading Elie Weisel`s Night to them, visiting the Holocaust Museum in Manhattan, and for the last 15 years had them listen to the story and meet the survivor of the Holocaust who lives in Hewlett, Marion Blumenthal Lazan. How pitiful it is that our present generation who have not been educated about this important horror in history will never be able to understand the present day parallels to what is happening in our country. <br
To view the video below is not an exaggeration of how little our students are being exposed to the truth. Our assistant superintendent at Lawrence Public Schools, Vicki Karant, once said, ‘Be very careful when they start eliminating the truth about the Holocaust, for then they will begin to rewrite history.’ ”
Holly
www.youtube.com