Yom HaShoah

Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Memorial Day) seems like an appropriate time to start a blog about being a teacher of the Holocaust.  I have been teaching the Holocaust to 7th graders at Temple Sinai in Rochester, NY since 1997.  It was rather a fluke how I started.   Due to health reasons, the 7th grade teacher had to leave halfway through the year.  I had already been a regular sub at the synagogue, so I took over the class.

My Holocaust education was rather slim.  As a teen in the late 1970s and early 1980s, I was exposed to the shock and horror of the Holocaust through films like Night and Fog -- a film I would NEVER show to my own students.  Over the years, I had read many memoirs and seen films, and I had been to Yad V'Shem in Jerusalem several times (another story, but I lived in Israel for almost five years).  I still felt that I was merely one step ahead of my students.  After that first year, I was asked if I wanted to rewrite the curriculum for the Holocaust unit (half the year).  Indeed I did!  Now, I felt like I was three steps ahead of the class.  Since, then, I've continued to read, study, and revamp my curriculum.  



Though I didn't choose to teach Holocaust, I feel as though I have been chosen to make sure that the victims' stories are remembered and passed down to the next generation(s).  I do not take this obligation lightly.  It is, in fact, an honor and a privilege.

Your memories are mine... I will pass them on....

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Echoes -- Voices of the Past

You call, I listen

You ask, I say yes.

I could not be your life preserver,

But I can be your memory preserver.

I will tell your story.