Early in my teaching career, New Jersey established a mandated Holocaust curriculum for K-12 students. It was 1994 when Governor Christine Todd Whitman signed into law the Holocaust and Genocide Mandate, making New Jersey the first state in the nation to mandate Holocaust education. As a teacher in a public school, I was proud of my state, and I was proud of my school district for immediately taking the mandate seriously and incorporating Holocaust education into our learning in an age-appropriate manner.
As a primary grade teacher, we talked about bullying, exclusion and inappropriate language used against others simply because you did not like or understand that someone was different from you. We paralleled Holocaust discrimination with our Black History lessons and built understanding that even when people look different than you do, we are all human and we should welcome others regardless of our differences.
After I taught for ten years in the public school, I began teaching at a Solomon Schechter Day School where I sent my daughters. Obviously, I believed this school would do a good job of teaching about the Holocaust. As a general studies teacher, I shared picture books on the Holocaust with our youngest students and age-appropriate historical fiction novels in the middle grades. I felt these students were learning from a very young age what the Holocaust was and specifically how it affected our people. Many of the students had grandparents who were survivors. My daughters knew intimately about the Holocaust because both of their father’s parents were survivors. Unfortunately, even at this school, some of the students did not internalize what actually happened during the Holocaust.
In 2009, my father-in-law, Joseph Bonder, was reunited with his rescuer by the Jewish Foundation for the Righteous. This organization connects with the Righteous Among the Nations and provides economic support for those who need it. They also visit the rescuers in their home countries and try their best to arrange reunions. In 2009, the JFR brought Bronislaw Firuta, the son of the woman who hid and saved my father-in-law and his sister, during the Holocaust. We were fortunate to be at JFK airport to welcome Bronislaw, as he saw my father-in-law for the first time in 65 years. It was an incredible experience and reconnected the octogenarians until the end of their lives.
After the documentary was published, my father-in-law came to my school and spoke to the students after they watched the video. He answered their questions and was a face and identity with whom those students could connect. For years after his visit, I showed the video to my classes on Yom HaShoa. To this day, other teachers who remain at the school share the video. His testimony is essential to the goal of “Never Again”.
Unfortunately, in today’s environment, I fear that Holocaust education is suffering. After October 7th, school districts seem to be stepping away from Holocaust education. One of my educational, volunteer roles is as a facilitator for Holocaust survivors and their children and grandchildren to share their testimony in public schools, private schools, religious schools, and synagogues around our Jewish Federation catch basin. I feel it is one of my responsibilities as a Jewish educator to make sure I share their stories because soon, they will no longer be here to share them on their own.
Last May, I was invited to share my father-in-law’s story in my local middle school. Initially, the teacher who invited me and the principal of the school were very inviting and welcoming when asking me to present his story. The principal even mentioned that I could connect what happened in the Holocaust to what was happening at that time here in the United States. I was surprised that he invited me to share the parallels, but glad because personally, my daughter was going through a difficult and painful experience in her graduate school program at New York University. He told me I could share because there had been a couple of incidents of antisemitism at the school and it would be meaningful to connect that to the Holocaust.
Unfortunately, the day before I was scheduled to speak, he emailed me to ask what I would specifically be speaking about. He said he had gotten some concerns from students and teachers, that my talk would be too “political”. I was extremely taken aback by this message. I had shared the video of my father-in-law’s experience. Why would they think it was too political? When it came down to it, the principal said that the student/or teacher was afraid they would feel threatened because of their Arab/Muslim/Palestinian heritage. This was right after the campus protests which were directly targeting Jewish students on campus. Personally, I felt that this was in and of itself an example of antisemitism toward me and my story.
To allay the principal’s fears, I told him I would be comparing the acts of the Nazis, to those of bullies who pick on people for being different. I would explain that the Holocaust was an extreme because it led to death. Therefore, the students should realize they shouldn’t be bystanders if they see antisemitism, they should step in and speak against it. I presented to 400 students, teachers, administrators and even the assistant superintendent.
Fast forward to this school year. I accompanied one survivor to a junior/senior class on Holocaust and genocide. I accompanied a second generation child of survivors to another high school and the entire junior class was present. The 2G shared a PowerPoint she created of her parents’ stories and she concluded her presentation with the parallels of what is happening today. The Jewish Federation received an email from the school thanking us for coming but also indicating that students were upset with the connection to what is happening today and as a result, did not internalize her family’s story, but instead focused on her parallels with what is happening on college campuses and what is happening in Gaza.
I also accompanied a granddaughter of survivors to a middle school. The eighth grade was present to hear her grandfather’s story of the forced death march he took after the Nazis were trying to empty Auschwitz before the allies liberated it. The students had just read the Eli Wiesel novel, Night, and her story connected her grandfather’s death march to Eli Wiesel’s description in the book. I learned from the principal, that reading Night in their English class was the only Holocaust education they were receiving in the middle school. While the presenter, whose children had gone to the school, requested from the principle that they should be doing more, his response was that he was “not responsible for curriculum”. When we opened the floor for questions, some of the questions were asked to get a reaction. One student asked, “If the Nazis wanted to kill all the Jews, why did they feed them?” It was as if the student was daring us to admit that the Nazis treated the Jews well because they fed them.
It's disheartening to discover that the state, which was the first to mandate Holocaust education in the United States, is not guaranteeing that all schools are adequately teaching the subject. It’s also disheartening that we must be so careful with how we share the stories because the population we are teaching doubts what happened and seems to be leaning toward supporting those in our world who support the genocide of Jews.
With so many people accusing Israel of genocide, now more than ever we must be vigilant in calling out antisemitism wherever it shows its ugly head. We must stand up for who we are and what we have experienced as Jews.
As an educator, whether I am working in Jewish schools or secular schools, I feel that Holocaust education must be taught and must illustrate how a genocide intends to murder a people, simply for being who they are. The Jews have not yet built up our population to the number we were prior to the Holocaust. Genocides decimate populations. We have a responsibility to make that fact known. The term genocide was coined after the Holocaust to label the intent of the Nazis to kill a people. We cannot let the atmosphere that has arisen since October 7th lessen the impact or the importance of Holocaust education.
One last note, I researched how Holocaust education has been implemented in NJ. Of the schools who returned the state survey in 2023-2024, 99% had some form of Holocaust education. Unfortunately, most of the schools who implemented the mandate were in elementary and middle schools. I was unpleasantly surprised that only half of the high schools surveyed had Holocaust courses, and most of them were electives.
We need to do a better job. New Jersey was in the forefront in 1994, but today, we are still waiting for New Jersey to pass the IHRA (International Holocaust Remembrance Association) definition of antisemitism into law. All educators, and Jewish teachers in particular, have an obligation to share the testimonies of survivors, and the stages leading up to the Holocaust. We are in trying times and we must be vigilant to make sure that “Never Again” is not an empty saying.