Third-generation school programs provide a link to the Holocaust

Apr. 9—Dave S. Reckess, the executive director of nonprofit that acts as living link to preserve the legacies and the lessons of the Holocaust, is inspired by all four of his grandparents, but especially by his grandmother Sarah Tuller, who died in 2020.

"How descendants learn about the Holocaust is different from everybody," Mr. Reckess said.

For Mr. Reckess, part of that lesson involved a story told by his grateful Grandmother Tuller and the time she was gifted a couple of eggs.

"While we were all sitting around the Passover table and celebrating the holiday, she would share with us the story about how when she was in hiding in Warsaw and being hidden by a Polish Catholic family," Mr. Reckess said. "The family one day had gotten an extra ration of eggs to help celebrate Easter. They wanted my grandmother and her parents to have something special to celebrate the holiday with."

So when the family came home with the extra eggs, two were shared.

"She would talk about that," Mr. Reckess said. "Two eggs is not a lot of food. But they didn't have a lot of food. They didn't have a lot of anything. But that gift was a real important gesture for her and gave her hope that there was still good in people in the world and maybe there was something worth living for if they could make it through, and if they could survive."

Mr. Reckess is the executive director of 3GNY, an organization founded by grandchildren of Holocaust survivors, with the 3G in the name referring to the third generation. Its mission is to educate about the perils of intolerance and to provide a supportive forum for the descendants of survivors. As part of its mission, it operates WEDU, which includes a school classroom element. 3GNY will host virtual outreach programs via the web today at Pulaski Academy High School and on April 18 for three sixth-grade classes at Massena Central. Mr. Reckess said that 3GNY also recently connected with Indian River High School and will be presenting in Ciara VanCour's 10th and 11th grade classes in early June.

"We train grandchildren of survivors to compellingly share their family stories with middle and high school audiences," Mr. Reckess said in a phone interview from the 3GNY office in Syracuse. "They invite us in. A volunteer will come either in person, or in the north country, virtually, and share a 15-to-20-minute story about their grandparents, a little bit about life before the war, where they were and how they survived during the war, and then a little bit about what happened afterwards and how they started a new life or picked up the pieces and how they were able to move on and what lessons we can take from that."

The programs also extend to community groups who request them, Mr. Reckess said.

"It's all free of charge," he said. "Our mission is to educate as many people as we can about the dangers of intolerance and help to learn the individual histories and build that empathy to those who survived."

Mr. Reckess is the grandchild of four Holocaust survivors — from Poland and Russia. But it's the stories of his Grandmother Tuller that he best recalls when it comes to the Holocaust.

"By the time I was a small kid, my grandmother had started talking and sharing about sharing her experiences," he said. "It took a while to do that. I don't remember a time where I didn't know she had survived the Holocaust. It was always worked into conversations in different ways and age-appropriate ways. It was the little things that were part of my interactions with her. Things would come up about her life in the Lublin ghetto or things that happened before the war, and she would always talk about what life was like before the war and how things changed, and of course how her life completely changed."

A SENSE OF DUTY

Mrs. Tuller married Alex "Sasha" Tuller while still in Poland. They, along with her parents, moved to America to begin a new life in 1946. Mrs. Tuller died in Florida in 2020 at the age of 97. According to her obituary, she and her parents "miraculously survived the Holocaust thanks to an abundance of luck, fierce resilience, and the bravery and generosity of others." Sarah's two brothers and most of her extended family perished in the war.

"That was always part of my identity, part of me knowing who I am — my Jewish identity, my identity as an American citizen," Mr. Reckess said. "All of that is connected to understanding the impact of the Holocaust — coming to the U.S. as refugees, starting a new life, a new family as immigrants in a new country."

Mr. Reckess was born in Brooklyn and grew up in Poughkeepsie. He and his wife lived previously on the west coast and returned to New York state nearly two decades ago when his wife got into Syracuse University's College of Law. Mr. Reckess has been 3GNY's executive director for about two years. When he accepted the job, he said that the Holocaust wasn't "front and center" in his life in an active way. That began to change the year after his Grandmother Tuller died when his son entered the seventh grade.

"He started to learn about the Holocaust in school," Mr. Reckess said. "It hit me that if it had been the previous year, I would have invited my grandmother to come and speak to his class and share about her life. Realizing she was no longer around to do that, I felt very strongly that now, that responsibility, that duty, is mine."

Mr. Reckess, trained as an elementary school teacher, then found out about 3GNY and signed up for its speaker training class.

"I found my place right away," he said. "At the same time, they were looking for a new executive director and I was grateful to step into that opportunity."

3GNY, founded in 2005, is based in New York City, with volunteers spread around New York, New Jersey and parts of Connecticut and Pennsylvania. 3GNY has trained over 400 descendants of survivors

"Because we can do a lot of work virtually now, we've been able to engage volunteers literally across the country to be speakers and to go into schools," Ms. Reckess said. "We've been able to use virtual technology to reach schools that we've never would have been able to if we had to drive there."

A return to Massena

Last year, Nicole A. Terminelli at Massena Central hosted three different 3GNY presenters during virtual programs for her third-grade classes. In August, Ms. Terminelli was appointed principal of Madison Elementary School.

Ms. Terminell said that the programs she hosted as teacher were folded into the class curriculums. The school also organizes a "March Madness Book Challenge" and one of the books in the challenge was the novel "Linked" by Gordon Korman. The plot concerns a quiet town that is shaken when someone sneaks into a school and vandalizes it with a swastika.

"We did a novel study of the book in sixth grade in my class prior to the 3GNY presentations, just so the kids could build a little bit of background knowledge," Ms. Terminelli said. "'Linked' is set in the present, so there was a good connection there."

The 3GNY presenters, Ms. Terminelli said, shared videos, maps and other primary source documents in addition to their own stories.

"We were looking at maps, pictures and videos. One of the hosts had videotapes of their grandparents singing in their native language. It's always amazing to hear stories of the past. There's just something majestic about storytelling, especially when it's somebody telling a story about their own family. It's able to come to life."

The grandchildren of the Holocaust survivors, Ms. Terminelli said, reflected obvious pride about their grandparents and what they overcame.

"And the dialogue ... it's bringing tears to my eyes just talking about it — that we were able to have after, and the connections that they made just talking about how when we just choose to dislike somebody because of something that they have no control over, and how that can make such a derogatory mark on people as they move forward."

New state standards

Ms. Terminelli, also District 14 St. Lawrence County Legislator, noted that last year, renewed emphasis was placed on Holocaust education in the state through a New York state law signed in August by Gov. Kathleen C. Hochul. It required public school district superintendents to attest in a survey that their districts are teaching about the Holocaust appropriately as part of classroom instruction aligned with the state's Social Studies Learning Standards.

"We needed to access our Holocaust instruction to make sure we were educating students correctly about history without bias," Ms. Terminelli said. "Right away, I reached out to my curriculum director and said, 'Share 3G NY with people, because anybody who teaches the Holocaust as part of their curriculum will want to invite the 3G people in.' I'm excited that we've got some teachers who are willing to host and to have that experience because it truly is unforgettable. The students won't forget the stories they'll Hear."

Mr. Reckess noted there are other "3G" organizations around the country. "We all work very closely together to support each other and create a national network of 3Gs," he said.

The need for the groups grows daily.

"As the grandchildren of survivors, we know that the number of survivors who are with us is getting less and less," Mr. Reckess said. "Even those who are still alive, the numbers of survivors who are healthy enough and strong enough and able to go into schools and share their stories with students is dwindling. Within a matter of years, there won't be any left. So, as the grandchildren, we very much feel that responsibility and take on that responsibility — to continue sharing those personal stories. What educational research has shown is that storytelling can connect with students in a way that extends and personalizes the learning that they're doing in school."

Such lessons are important, Mr. Reckess said, with the growth of anti-Semitism. On March 23, CNN reported that anti-Semitic incidents in the U.S. reached their highest level last year since the Anti-Defamation League began recording them in 1979.

"Social media posts and conspiracy theories are using the same tropes; the same kind of tropes and themes that led to the Holocaust," Mr. Reckess said.

Hosting a program

The term 3G was derived from "2G," a term children of survivors have used to describe their generation. Daniel Brooks, a grandson of four Holocaust survivors, grew up feeling a strong connection to his family's history and wanted to explore what this connection meant. In 2005, he attended a 2G meeting where he noticed others his age, who also felt they should have their own group. 3GNY's membership exceeds 5,000. It has diverse programs, including museum tours, film screenings, theater engagements, discussion groups, book readings, visits and dialogue with survivors, Shabbat dinners, Jewish cultural events, intergenerational gatherings, genealogy workshops and field trips.

Mr. Reckess said there is still time left this academic year for school districts in the north country to request a WEDU program. For more information, write to wedu@3gnewyork.org or go to www.3gny.org.

"The free programs are supported through the generosity of donors in our communities," Mr. Reckess said. "There's a lot of people who recognize the importance of preserving the stories and helping every student find a meaningful connection to the lessons of the legacy of the Holocaust."