Lessons for Humanity

Davis, Perry

TEACHING THE HOLOCAUSTIN NEW YORK CITY'S PUBLIC SCHOOLS LESSONS FOR HUMANITY FERRY DAVIS M. D. Mehdi, head of the American Arab Relations Committee, calls it "an attempt by the Zionists to use...

...Students are told that they are Jews living in America...
...The Catholic Tablet praised the curriculum editorially: "Holocaust studies are a breakthrough Their success should encourage another look at ways to strengthen public education's ability to further the total growth...
...Congressman, he introduced similar legislation— H.R...
...An investigation ensued...
...A near-riot broke out, and a young girl, who apparently had nothing to do with the slur, was hurt...
...And it soon became clear, as pressure for a city-wide curriculum continued, despite the initial disappointment, that the best job would be done by teachers and administrators who were already doing it...
...claim you are not Jewish...
...New York has the largest Jewish population of any city in the world...
...Rescue work is discussed—that of Father Roncalli, for example, later Pope John XXIII...
...Seymour Lach-man, then president of the New York Board of Education, met with community and Jewish organization leaders to discuss the creation of a Holocaust curriculum An Orthodox Jew who had lost family in Nazi Europe, Lach-man further explored the idea with the chief school administrator, Irving Anker, who agreed to proceed Some months later, Lachman announced his intention to leave the Board...
...Moreover, he continues, "There is no real proof that the Holocaust actually did happen...
...The Bakke case was being presented before the Supreme Court, and new teacher hiring and assignment patterns were being established in New York City as a reaction to charges of discrimination by the United States Office of Civil Rights Some Jewish leaders viewed these efforts as a direct assault on the principle of hiring and promotion by merit...
...As progress continued in both areas, the Board and the Chancellor sought to separate the Holocaust project from the growing clamor for ethnic studies...
...Despite Solarz's best efforts, neither the State of New York nor the U.S...
...That time is now, in any case, done...
...Webb wrote the introduction to the two-volume work...
...Anwar Sadat at Yad Vashem...
...No," he said...
...We don't put enough stock in the common sense of the average child...
...On the other hand, the fall of 1977 was a precarious time for Jews...
...The Holocaust, A Study of Genocide...
...Yet here, despite its uniquely rich resources, New York had obviously fallen behind...
...Blacks had lost their one leadership position on the Board of Estimate and it appeared likely that four of the five borough presidents, the next mayor, and the comptroller, would all be Jewish Blacks felt politically powerless, and claims that "the Jews control everything" spread rapidly...
...The complete guide is adaptable for a mini-section within the world history course or as a full semester elective on the Holocaust...
...Citing the Holocaust as "the essential trauma of the 20th century," Lachman said, "at the very least students must know that the Nazis murdered six million Jewish men, women, and children " He urged that a special unit be integrated into the social studies, and suggested supplementary curriculum and textbook materials In addition, he asked that the State Education Department fund summer institutes to train teachers in the subject...
...The latest profound interest of the crimes of the German people under Hitler, by the public media and now the schools to poison the minds of our young people against everything that is German (German = Nazi) makes me (us) wonder if Hitler was not so wrong after all " Though they were publicly quiet, some Jewish leaders expressed reluctance about the curriculum...
...Arnold Webb, a respected and sensitive black educator...
...Independently, however, the New York City Board of Education continued its efforts...
...The response was mixed, but mostly negative...
...Additional criticism came from the Association of Orthodox Jewish Teachers...
...programs in Holocaust Studies...
...One of her lesson plans was a game called "Survive," developed by a rabbi in Kansas City, Missouri...
...The Amsterdam News, the most important paper in the black community, ran a red front page banner headline reading, "Holocaust Study Jeered...
...5490—before the House of Representatives, describing it as "a bill to direct the National Institute of Education to develop curricula concerning the destruction of the European Jewish Community by Nazi Germany prior to and during WW II, for dissemination to elementary and secondary schools...
...The accompanying article quoted Reverend Mitchell and Jitu Wensi, formerly known as Les Campbell, who was accused of anti-Semitic statements during the Ocean Hill-Brownsville controversy...
...A city in which a black project chairman and an Italian school board president and a group of Jewish teachers can bring a project on the teaching of the Holocaust to fruition can scarcely be thought bankrupt...
...A huge wave of anti-Semitism sweeps the country...
...As he spoke, a shout of "Hei I Hitler" came from Lefferts Junior High School, directly across the street...
...One writer said-"I am a Christian German-American (three grandparents from Germany) and urge you to continue with your plans for the Holocaust curriculum in the New York schools If every child in the world were to understand the . full horror of the Nazi regime, perhaps such a terrible thing would never happen again I have been appalled by recent reports that large numbers of German children are totally ignorant of the concentration camps and their implications...
...In New York City, as elsewhere, the Second World War is given brief attention in the curriculum, and there is at best only passing reference to the special case of the Holocaust In fact, Diane Roskies, in her Teaching the Holocaust to Children, reviews the work of other scholars who have sought references to the Holocaust in public school textbooks, and finds that in twelve out of fifteen of the most commonly used world history texts, there isno mention at all of the Hitler genocide...
...Given the disappointing reception of the new curriculum, and the objections, the matter might well have been shelved at that point After all, one can hardly contend that there was a powerful constituency for whom the matter was genuinely urgent...
...The central administration had tried, and had produced a mediocre product What to do...
...Mehdi and Mr...
...Schechter, Zachter, Zornberg, Boyman, and other teachers, some of whom were excused from their classroom duties, were asked to collaborate on the project during the 1976-77 school year And the Kansas City game of "Survive" and the music of the Modzhitzer Rebbe made it into the city-wide curriculum The project team was directed by Charlotte Frank, Florence Jackson, and Albert Post...
...The Board of Education received hundreds of letters when the new curriculum was announced...
...Let it never again happen to any other people anywhere in this earth...
...And at a Queens high school, Nancy Boyman was teaching a course on the Holocaust to more than 200 students a year...
...William Moody, principal of the school, was asked if his curriculum included any courses focusing on the cultures of different racial and religious groups in the community...
...Recommendations for classroom use were "unimaginative...
...Materials were collected from hundreds of sources and from publications ranging from the German "Anti-Semites Petition" issued in 1880 to an article on children of survivors which appeared in The New York Times Magazine on June 19, 1977 The guide begins with a section on genocide and racism and includes a specific reading on the massacre of the Armenians by the Turks in the early part of this century It dramatizes the ways in which the study of the Holocaust can alert people to present and future dangers of bigotry Describing European Jewry prior to the Holocaust, one lesson is devoted to the historical position of the Jewish ghetto, a concept quite different from the "ghetto" as it is understood by New York's inner city students The section on the Nazi takeover shows how school children in Germany were barraged with propaganda Actual sample lessons are reproduced from Nazi textbooks The rise of anti-Semitism, and the groundwork for genocide, are documented through reproductions of vicious anWewish cartoons...
...But out of 1.1 million public school students, the overwhelming majority are not Jews (More than 70 percent are members of black, Hispanic, or other minority groups...
...He concluded, "The entire human race has been diminished bythe Holocaust...
...Congress enacted the measures...
...Yet there has been almost no curricu-lar effort to break through the conventional stereotypes of the Jews which so many public school students share— images of the Jew as slumlord, as exploitive businessman, as paternalistic liberal...
...That viewpoint was—perhaps still is—widely shared...
...And when there is a reference, it may well be no more than the following typical example: "A generation now living knows that thousands of people were killed in gas chambers because they were a minority group in Germany...
...Hundreds of Chassi-dim marched behind his hearse through the streets of Crown Heights...
...But beyond that, the concepts of racism, genocide, and national resistance, epitomized in the Holocaust, manifestly affect all peoples...
...At that meeting, Deputy Health, Education, and Welfare Commissioner Thomas M inter pledged greater support on the part of the Carter Administration for Holocaust studies saying, "this promise is wholly consistent with President Carter's emphasis on human rights...
...Time spent on these subjects far exceeds the proposal for a two week minimum requirement for Holocaust studies...
...There are children's drawings and poems recovered from liberated concentration camps...
...They claimed that a similar requirement should be instituted to teach about racism and slavery in America...
...In Crown Heights, a Brooklyn neighborhood shared by Lubavitch Chassi-dim and blacks, a man named Israel Turner was shot to death by a mugger as he was returning home from Friday night services in late 1975...
...New York's junior Senator, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, compared new teacher assignment patterns to the Nuremberg laws, further fanning the flames of discord The introduction of the Holocaust curriculum in the 70 percent minority public school system threatened to tax whatever fragile bonds existed between blacks and Jews even further...
...Part two is 371 pages of actual teaching material to be reproduced for use in the classroom, accompanied by suggested lesson plans...
...Soon, his students were actually dancing in the classroom aisles...
...Group pressures, trial and error, private initiative, the energy of decency—these are all aspects of a process that is its own insurance against a repetition of the horrors the curriculum describes...
...None would be quoted, but some felt that the Holocaust was too sacred to study in public schools, while others feared it might provoke new anti-Semitism...
...What had angered these two men, and a number of others, was the announcement, on October 6, 1977, at a press conference at 110 Livingston Street—headquarters of the New York City public school system—of a new course for high school students...
...Nor is that prospect the product of a Jewish cabal...
...Jews have, of course, been centrally involved, but the story of how the New York City public schools have come to initiate the proposed program is not, essentially, a story of Jewish power...
...And at about the same time that New York was addressing the matter, Holocaust studies programs had been instituted in Lawrence and Great Neck, in Chicago, San Francisco, and in Philadelphia (where it was announced that the curriculum would become mandatory after one year of experimental m-class application...
...Further, he states, the subject "is almost too serious for classroom study...
...Deportations begin and Jews suddenly disappear "What do you do now7" the students are asked...
...There were a few people, and a few groups, but most of the school system was preoccupied with more obvious problems The path of least resistance would seem to have led to abandoning the project But the people who cared cared deeply...
...It wasn't easy for the young social studies teacher to explain Chassidic culture to his non-Jewish and largely non-white high school students The Chassidim they saw in their neighborhoods seemed strange and foreign Schechter, a member of the Association of Orthodox Jewish Teachers, looked for points of access...
...Emphasis added...
...Specifically, "more information is provided on the controversy over the United States' refusal to ratify the Genocide Convention than on the Jewish world that was wiped out...
...While the introduction of Holocaust studies could hardly • be viewed as a competitive race, New York has always, with good reason, perceived itself as an educational innovator...
...was, at the same time, conducting its own conference on the teaching of genocide and the Nazi Holocaust in American secondary schools...
...He cites several examples of genocide but notes that the specific case of the Holocaust was selected because "in this tragic chapter in human history, the intent and scope of mass murder are unprecedented...
...Requests for the curriculum came from scores of school districts throughout the United States and Canada...
...Here and there, teachers in the New York system—as also in other scattered school districts around the country— have tried, over the years, to convey some part of the story and meaning of the Holocaust to their students In several cases, the efforts have been unusually imaginative, the results most impressive...
...Ghettoes are set up...
...In the mam, however, Jewish reaction was positive...
...The Dewey Holocaust Center was dedicated on Yom HaShoah, the day that commemorates the Holocaust, in April 1977 These and other similar projects were quietly happening at a handful of New York's public high schools Al Zachter, chairman of a social studies department, was instructing colleagues on the teaching of the Holocaust at special seminars...
...Diane Roskies, in a review of the guide, asserted that the unique nature of the tragedy had not been made clear...
...Students are told to organize themselves into families and come up with quick joint decisions...
...Board of Education officials responded that studies dealing with slavery and racism were already integral parts of the American history curriculum and a State Regents requirement...
...Perry Davis is Senior Special Assistant to the President of the Board of Education, New York City...
...The Jew as contributor to American culture, the Jew as poor and elderly, the Jew as survivor, the Jew as dedicated teacher—these images are ignored The reasoning—and the consequence—are apparent in one especially dramatic episode...
...Just when one might have supposed that the "market" for Holocaust studies was drying up, when a generation of newer and more dazzling horrors had been brought to our homes via television, as guilt for participation, guilt for ignorance, guilt for silence .were winding down—just 'then, it happened...
...A key reaction to the Holocaust curriculum came from the black community Black-Jewish tensions, which had boiled over during the 1968 Ocean Hill-Brownsville community school control controversy, were simmering once again At the time the Holocaust curriculum was issued, New York City was in the midst of a mayoral election...
...It consists of two parts The first, 90 pages long, outlines the scope and sequence of the guide It includes an annotated bibliography, lists of audio-visual materials, and sources for- more information...
...But many central school board officials and other community leaders disagreed...
...But these have been chiefly the products of private initiative...
...Prior to his departure, however, he testified before the New York State Assembly Education Committee, which was conducting hearings to determine the need for Holocaust studies in the public schools, statewide...
...City Board of Education, its Chancellor and its Director of Educational Planning and Support—an Italo-American Catholic, a Jew, and a black...
...Interestingly, many queries came from Jewish day schools in the process of developing their own Holocaust courses...
...It is a story of urban coalition— lower case letters, no fanfare—and of teachers working at their tasks, of skilled and enterprising professionalism working its way up through a system...
...Board President Stephen Aiello expressed the hope that after extensive experimental use this year and a summer of revision, the study of the Holocaust would become a mandated part of every high school student's course of study The negative reactions were given full press coverage, and overshadowed the more interesting, and surely more important, story of how such a project had come to pass, of what it says about New York, and of what it might mean to a generation of students...
...The 66-page experimental teaching guide, which included five model lesson plans, was written by the head of the Board's Social Studies office, Albert Post, and produced by the American Association for Jewish Education Copies were sent to every high school with requests for limited try-outs and reactions...
...It creates a bad atmosphere toward German-Americans in this country...
...The average child is fair-minded and doesn't harbor any anti-Semitic feelings and we might suggest something that isn't there...
...The Association objected to its exclusion from the review process...
...At the same time, Horace W. Morris, the Executive Director of the New York Urban League, praised the project, as did the Urban Coalition The entire Holocaust curriculum project was supervised by Dr...
...Lachman was succeeded by his former special assistant, Stephen Aiello, who was actively committed to ethnic studies and to the Holocaust curriculum in particular...
...trust that this is all a mistake" to "organize acts of sabotage directed at those organizations responsible for the persecution " Rigorous time limits are set...
...Because the city's population includes many Holocaust survivors and families of victims, the subject was more than history—it had a highly personal impact...
...Larry Lavinsky, chairman of the New York Chapter of the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, congratulated the Board and called the project "a major step toward the introduction of teaching about the Holocaust . . and for making it part of the body of knowledge of all students " A.D.L...
...The press conference to which Mr...
...Yet the horror of genocide in the 20th century must be faced, and the story must be told so that students of all races and religions in our public schools can understand the danger confronting all peoples when human rights are denied to any one people...
...The Holocaust was not to be taught as a Jewish history subject, but rather as a case of monumental bigotry, thus a key topic in value education...
...And the best evidence is that in troubled New York City, whose public school system is beset by problems budgetary and ideological, racial and curricu-lar, there is now every prospect that henceforward each and every high school student will be required to spend not less than two weeks—in many cases, much more time than that— studying the Holocaust...
...More than a year earlier, efforts to develop a Holocaust curriculum for the New York Publ ic School s had begun...
...And the American response is described Students are asked to react to the cover design of Arthur Morse's book, While Six Million Died, a reticent Statue of Liberty with lowered torch The final section is titled, "How can the study of the ¦Holocaust contribute to a more humane world7" and lesson plans involve issues of Nazi fugitives, the Eich-mann trial, the Calley trial, and the Vietnam War...
...The Holocaust: A Case Study of Genocide was published by the Board of Education in September, 1975...
...A special section focuses on the murder of non-Jews by the Nazis and on the violent resistance efforts of Jews and non-Jews...
...of the citizens of tomorrow, the next generation of our city...
...As the exercise continues, squabbles break out and feelings of panic fill the classroom In Brooklyn, at John Dewey High School, another teacher, Ira Zornberg, established a Holocaust center with a special state grant used to purchase audio and video taping equipment Students met and filmed Holocaust survivors in their own communities The victims described their experiences in the ghettoes and death camps The school library was remodeled to house a Holocaust photographic and bibliographic exhibit, including newspaper microfilms and other materials from the Nazi period...
...Some black girls were seen looking out the window and giggling...
...Perhaps a time of silence and repression was required, perhaps not...
...Elie Wiesel, and Lucy Dawidowicz, and a course started by students at Hampshire College, and a dozen other courses, and as many national and international conferences, and even Ph.D...
...Then-Assemblyman Stephen Solarz chaired the hearings, and announced the introduction of legislation mandating Holocaust studies...
...At least here in the United States we can be sure that our children are informed...
...A child's identification card stamped with a large "J" is shown...
...The implementation of the "Final Solution" is then described, including information on the concentration and extermination camps...
...Some of its members, teachers in the public schools, were already devoting course time to the Holocaust...
...It was the occasion for the announcement of the program, and for distribution of a new 461-page curriculum guide for teachers, product of years of preparation and thousands of manhours of work...
...The following year, as a U.S...
...He was already teaching his students about ghettoes and Chassi-dim, Nuremberg laws and concentration camps...
...Lieutenant Abe Kushner of the New York Police Department said that the curriculum would ease tension and that "the work might be adapted for use in police sensitivity training courses...
...By September 1977, The Holocaust- A Study of Genocide was finished...
...Pape objected was called by the President of the New York Dr...
...They are given a list of options ranging from "Go to the authorities...
...Reverend Timothy Mitchell, Chairman of the National Conference of Black Churchmen, and the leadership of the New York Association of Black Educators opposed the Holocaust curriculum and objected to efforts to make the unit mandatory...
...TEACHING THE HOLOCAUSTIN NEW YORK CITY'S PUBLIC SCHOOLS LESSONS FOR HUMANITY FERRY DAVIS M. D. Mehdi, head of the American Arab Relations Committee, calls it "an attempt by the Zionists to use the city educational system for their evil propaganda purposes...
...Jay Schechter is a New York teacher who didn't wait for a curriculum to be handed down from above...
...In a curious way, then, the story of how the New York City public school system has come to this point in developing a mandatory curriculum for Holocaust studies provides a lesson almost as important as the materials themselves...
...The procession stopped in front of the local police precinct and a rabbi mounted the steps to plead for Israel Turner's soul—and to ask for better police protection...
...The Board also received its share of hate mail' "The Holocaust is used as a fund raising tool by the State of Israel and by the wealthy Jews here in the U.S.A...
...And George Pape, the president of the German-American Committee of Greater New York, says, "I'm very much against it...
...He brought in music from "Fiddler on the Roof" and nigunim of the Mod-zhitzer Rebbe...

Vol. 3 • January 1978 • No. 3


 
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