NEWS BITE
Talking Numbers The Lower Division math faculty had three workshops with Math Solutions, emphasizing number talks which help children build mental math and computation skills. Teachers meet by grade to discuss strategies to be used in the classroom.
Yad Vashem, Jerusalem
T
his past summer, Yad Vashem’s International School for Holocaust Studies selected an international group of 30 educators to participate in “Seminar for Educators in Jewish Education: Teaching About the Shoah and anti- Semitism”. The seminar was held at Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center, in Israel. Middle Division Humanities Chairperson Barbara Zelenetz attended. The child of Holocaust survivors, Mrs. Zelenetz grew up hearing about the experiences of her mother and aunts forced to live in a Hungarian ghetto and then transported to Auschwitz-Birkenau to work in muni-
tions plants, while her father was in a forced-labor camp. Learning their stories of survival and spiritual resistance influenced her to immerse herself in Holocaust studies and search for ways to perpetuate the dialogue with her students. The intense seminar classes covered a wide variety of topics including Jewish life in Eastern Europe before the war, Jewish politics and parties in Interwar Poland, the roots of anti-Semitism, Nazi ideology, life in the ghettos, the Final Solution, and spiritual and cultural resistance. In addition, several workshops covered the importance and use of film, literature, and photographs in the classroom. Yad Vashem’s educational philosophy focuses on understanding the emotional ability of students to handle the difficult aspects and details of the war. In terms of pedagogy, classes emphasized how to teach the Holocaust in an age-appropriate manner and bring the children safely into the study of such a difficult topic and bring them safely out as well. They created a new video toolbox to help teachers in the classroom, providing them with materials and discussion points.
who went on to serve heroically in every Israeli war; and Eva Lavie, from Poland, who was saved by Oskar Schindler. While the seminar mostly focused on authentic voices composed of testimonies, diaries, artifacts and photographs, the lectures brought the past into a universal context as well, by dealing with modern problems of anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial. It is no easy task for an educator to prepare students today to understand their past and place it in a modern context, but it is exactly what this program attempts to do. Mrs. Zelenetz has already begun implementing the seminar’s message into the curriculum. Discussions will emphasize the broad experiences of Jews in the Holocaust, of both Ashkenazi and Sephardic descent. While students will be exposed to the horrors of the Shoah in an age-appropriate manner, they will also be introduced to the rich cultural, religious, and social experiences of Jewish communities at that time, which will provide them with a meaningful context for their studies.
Most inspiring for Mrs. Zelenetz was meeting and speaking with survivors who came to share their stories: Daniel Gold, from Lithuania, who fought with the partisans in the forest; Yehudit Kleinman, from Italy, who was hidden in a monastery; Tibi Ram, from Slovakia, The Eternal Flame in the Hall of Remembrance at Yad Vashem, Jerusalem
Barbara Zelenetz with Holocaust survivor Tibi Ram.
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