Reflections by Amanda Dryer & Chaim Steinberg
Educators are often reluctant to teach about the Holocaust because they are afraid to traumatize their students. The International School for Holocaust Studies at Yad Vashem created a nine-day seminar for Jewish educators around the world in order to help them overcome this hurdle. Classrooms Without Borders supported Jewish educators from the Pittsburgh community to attend this effectively designed pedagogical experience and to meet like-minded educators.
When we first arrived, stumbling into a circle of chairs, most of us fresh off the plane, some lacking luggage, most of us didn’t have any idea what we were in for. As the introductions were made and our first activity commenced, most of our hungry and exhausted minds were half-occupied with dinner, but we quickly found ourselves drawn to the posters we studied and the conversation they spurred.
We started with covering Jewish life before the Holocaust, which is vitally important in order to avoid defining Jewish identity solely through the Holocaust. The days to follow included learning about the rise of anti-Semitism, life in the ghettos, resistance, concentration camps, and life after the Holocaust – all taught by experts in the field and through hands-on learning at a museum. The seminar was well planned and incorporated the physical structure of the museum, taking us from moment to moment, subtly reinforcing everything we learned with artifacts and additional materials.
As the first days passed, the seminar’s materials increased in weight and speed, while we were introduced and got to know lifelong colleagues from around the world. On the day of our departure, standing stunned, waiting in the lobby of the hotel, we hung on to each other, delaying the inevitable goodbyes, even as we made plans to share taxis and trains and vans to the airport. These were friends with whom we had wandered the streets of the old city, eaten schwarma at Machane Yehuda, and joined in awe at the crowds streaming towards the kotel on the eve of Tisha B’Av – and suddenly we were scattered to the winds. Arizona, Pennsylvania, New York, Florida, and Australia waited for us, our heads spinning with lesson plans and ideas that we couldn’t wait to put into play.
The most meaningful part of the seminar was a tour of The Valley of the Communities at Yad Vashem, a site that lists 5,000 Jewish communities that were destroyed by or barely survived the Holocaust. These communities are engraved on 107 walls. Today, in most cases, nothing remains of these communities but their names. This seminar taught us that the Jewish people are not just victims – they had a life before, during, and after the Holocaust and we must remember and celebrate their lives. We must recognize their ability to find hope within a time of tragedy. As educators, we have the responsibility to teach the Holocaust through personal testimonies. Moreover, we are grateful to Classroom Without Borders for providing us with the opportunity to grow on both a personal and professional level. We look forward to taking all that we have learned into our classrooms and passing it onto our students: L’dor V’dor (from generation to generation).