Local teacher receives award for Excellence in Holocaust Education

Benjamin Pounds, Oakridger
·2 min read
Julie Kinder-McMillan, winner of the Belz-Lippman Award
Julie Kinder-McMillan, winner of the Belz-Lippman Award

The Tennessee Holocaust Commission announced the recipients of the 2021 Belz-Lipman Award for Excellence in Holocaust Education.

The winners included Julie Kinder-McMillan of Robertsville Middle School.

She will receive a $1,500 scholarship. These funds can be used to develop new curriculum, attend trainings and purchase resources to help further engage students in the study of the Holocaust. The virtual award ceremony took place on May 15 during the Holocaust Commission’s Annual Day of Remembrance Holocaust Commemoration.

The Tennessee Holocaust Commission has sponsored the 2022 Belz-Lipman Award for Excellence in Holocaust Education since 1995. Established by Memphis entrepreneurs and philanthropists Jack A. Belz and Ira Lipman, the award recognizes outstanding educators who excel in the teaching of the Holocaust. Each year educators from East, West and Middle Tennessee are honored. Past recipients of the award have gone on to attend international conferences, been appointed as Teacher Fellows to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and served as educational liaisons for the Commission.

Mira Kimmelman challenged students and those in her audiences to reflect upon the history of the Holocaust and contemporary examples of injustice.
Mira Kimmelman challenged students and those in her audiences to reflect upon the history of the Holocaust and contemporary examples of injustice.

Julie Kinder-McMillan has taught eighth grade English Language Arts at Robertsville Middle School in Oak Ridge for the past 25 years. She earned a B.A. from Carson-Newman College, M.A.T. from ETSU, and Ed.S. and Ed.D. from Carson-Newman University.

Kinder-McMillan incorporates Holocaust memoirs and history into an interdisciplinary PBL study each spring. In 2000 and 2014, Kinder-McMillan trained under scholars at the USHMM in Washington, D.C. She previously won the Belz-Lipman Award in 2013 and has served as a Teacher Fellow with the THC since that time. She chaired the Holocaust Education Conference co-sponsored by the THC and Oak Ridge Schools in 2019. She has co-facilitated the Mira Kimmelman Holocaust Study Group for adults in the Oak Ridge community since 2019 and is honored to be working with the Kimmelman family to carry forward the legacy of the late Mira Kimmelman, a Holocaust survivor and speaker who made her home in Oak Ridge, the news release stated.

"Julie is inspired by Kimmelman’s words from her memoir Echoes from the Holocaust: 'Only by remembering the bitter lessons of Hitler’s legacy can we hope it will never be repeated. Teach it, tell it, read it,'" the news release stated.

This article originally appeared on Oakridger: Local teacher receives award for Excellence in Holocaust Education