"A human side': Jewish community launches seminar on how to teach about the Holocaust

Yvonne Lustgarten, a teacher at Galloway Ridge Intermediate in the South-Western City Schools district, didn't know her parents were Holocaust survivors until she was an adult.

“Those weren't the Oprah days or the Jerry Springer days when people aired out their dirty laundry,” Lustgarten said of her parents, like so many other survivors, who chose to not talk about those traumatic experiences.

Dozens of teachers from school districts across central Ohio spent a day last month at Congregation Beth Tikvah in Worthington, a Jewish synagogue, where they received hands-on instruction so they could better educate the future generations of children about the Holocaust and the dangers of antisemitism.

During the workshop, Lustgarten, a sixth-grade language arts teacher, discovered a digital version of her mother's testimonial about her experiences during the Holocaust, which she had been searching for but had been unable to find.

“I’ve been teaching the Holocaust for over 30 years. Before the internet was a thing, I had to get my own resources,,” said Lustgarten, 58, who attends Beth Tikvah. “For me, taking this workshop supplements even more to what I’m doing.”

Teacher workshop seeks to create lesson plans on Holocaust education

Rabbi Rick Kellner, of Beth Tikvah, said that he and other members of the central Ohio Jewish community have been working for more than a year to provide the program after observing a rise in antisemitism during the COVID pandemic. Antisemitism continues to grow in America, and 2021 set a high-water mark for antisemitic incidents, according to a report released in April by Tel Aviv University’s Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry and the U.S.-based Anti-Defamation League.

“How can we help students understand the magnitude, the scope, the horrific atrocities of the Holocaust so they don't have a misunderstanding of the Holocaust?” Kellner said of the program's purpose.

The program is provided by Echoes & Reflections, a group founded in 2005 that provides educators with free resources to teach students about the significance of the Holocaust, using primary sources such as testimonials of survivors, photos and literature.

An estimated 6 million Jewish men, women and children were killed by the Nazi regime and its collaborators during World War II. Other groups, like the Roma and Slavic peoples, and people with disabilities were also targeted by the Nazi regime.

Echoes & Reflections also partners with the Anti-Defamation League, the University of Southern California Shoah Foundation and Yad Vashem, the world holocaust remembrance site in Jerusalem. The recently formed Ohio Holocaust and Genocide Memorial and Education Commission also partnered with Beth Tikvah to provide the seminar.

Growing up on Long Island, New York, Kellner said he was surrounded by Holocaust survivors, living testaments to the atrocities of the 20th century. He said there is only one surviving Holocaust victim to draw on in central Ohio right now.

“You can add a human side to this when we hear the number — 6 million Jews (killed in the Holocaust) — that is an enormous number," Kellner said. "But when you lift up the stories, and you can say these are human beings, you can preserve human dignity."

Forty-seven educators representing 13 schools, including Columbus City Schools, Olentangy Local School District, Gahanna-Jefferson Public Schools and local Catholic schools participated in last month's seminar. In addition to the seminar, they also toured the Beth Tikvah sanctuary and traveled to the Holocaust & Humanity Center in Cincinnati.

The seminar provided resources and lesson plans for helping students understand the history of antisemitic propaganda, modern-day antisemitism and the facts surrounding the Holocaust.

“What (young people) encounter on social media today, with memes and videos on TikTok and conspiracies proliferated by hate groups ... we’re really trying to help kids understand what actually happened during the Holocaust," he said.

Teachers say workshop prepared them with resources

Lustgarten said the workshop was hands-down the best seminar she's attended in her more than 30 years as a teacher.

“If I was someone who didn't teach this stuff before, I could teach it tomorrow,” Lustgarten said.

Lustgarten said she wants to help bring the program back annually.

Byrd Prillerman, an African American studies and government teacher at Columbus Online Academy, a K-12 online school through Columbus City Schools, said the workshop was an "eye-opening" experience. It also gave him a deeper appreciation for Judaism, he said.

Prillerman said he can use the seminar materials, including photos and testimonies, to highlight the importance of understanding the consequences of inhumanity, and compare and contrast it to other atrocities in American history, such as the Jim Crow inhumanities against African Americans.

"We don't want to relive things like slavery, like Rwanda," Prillerman said.

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This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Columbus area Jewish community launches teacher workshop on Holocaust