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many people that are connected,” Minkowitz said. “The more they know, the more they’ll call.”
Beyond the Classroom
New Milford High School offers its students a variety of opportunities to engage in Holocaust and genocide studies through a semester course titled “The Holocaust, Genocide and Human Behavior.” Colleen Tambuscio, the course teacher and a special education teacher at New Milford, created the curriculum and brought it to New Milford in 2005. As part of the curriculum, the 11th and 12th students enrolled in Tambuscio’s class each year delve into the Holocaust as well as the Armenian genocide, Cambodia, Darfur and other case studies, in order to “learn about the warning signs of genocide and how this relates to
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the past and present.” Students also engage with survivors who visit as speakers or appear via videoconferencing and video databases. Students accepted to the annual Holocaust Study Tour, now in its seventh year, join other students from across the country to travel to Berlin, Germany; Prague, Czech Republic; Olomouc-Trsice, Czech Republic; and Krakow, Poland. This year, 22 students from New Milford and Jersey City in New Jersey; Oakland, California; and Overland Park, Kansas, journeyed to these European cities and towns, visiting memorials and connecting with Holocaust survivors and their families. Once back from their trip, the students were inspired to work on fundraising efforts for memorials they plan to give to Olomouc and Trsice in commemoration of those
BC The Magazine // November/December 2011
who helped hide a Jewish family, the Wolfs, during the Holocaust. Otto Wolf, who was killed during the Holocaust, kept a diary of the ordeal he and his family endured while hiding from authorities. The diary, now at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, is required reading for the study tour students. Another recent expansion of the class has been a connection with students in Nahariya, Israel. Through the United Jewish Appeal Federation of Northern New Jersey’s Partnership 2000 program, Tambuscio visited Nahariya’s public high school last winter and gave several presentations on the Holocaust and other genocides. Several Nahariya students then traveled to North Jersey this past May and visited the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum with Tambuscio’s students.