Playwright helps students delve into Holocaust history
JACKSON TWP — Some Seneca Valley students were given a deeper look at the tragedies endured during the Holocaust when a guest speaker read diary entries and discussed their poignancy Monday morning.
The Holocaust was a genocide during World War II in which Nazi Germany systematically murdered 6 million European Jews — around two-thirds of the Jewish population of Europe — between 1941 and 1945.
Educator Susan Stein, who wrote a one-woman play based on the diaries and letters of Holocaust victim Etty Hillesum, spoke to the seventh and eighth graders in Ezekiel Stroupe's gifted education classes.
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Stein spoke of the impact of not only knowing about what happened in the Holocaust but about realizing the humanity — or lack thereof — in the situations forced on people.
Stein emphasized the importance of knowing about the Holocaust too, though, because of the discrepancies that eventually led to denials.
“(Holocaust deniers) don't deny it in this way that it never happened. That's a small minority of Holocaust denial,” Stein said. “What they do is they poke holes in it. They say 'Oh yeah, maybe it was 6 million, maybe it was 600,000, maybe it was 6,000, how do we know? It was war. People died, but it was war.'”
Stein said this is why she makes a point to refer to the deceased not as “those who died in the Holocaust” but as “murdered” instead. She said this language is important because changing one word at a time can change the accuracy of an event. In saying people died of disease or starvation, she said, it becomes something separate from the Holocaust when they actually died from the conditions of genocide.
Lexi Bardos, a student in Stroupe's class, said it was very touching to hear about the importance of learning the truth and teaching others. She said she gets fired up hearing about Holocaust deniers or reading articles about racism from the sixties or even today.“She brought up Holocaust deniers and how they poke holes in it,” Lexi said, “and I know a few people who don't take it seriously, and that really bothers me.”Lexi said her great-grandfather was captured during the war, which gives her a personal connection in her defense of the truth of the Holocaust.Another student in Stroupe's class, Shivani Umesh, said hearing from Stein expanded her knowledge of the Holocaust by giving more details about people's personal thoughts and individual experiences.“She (Stein) gave me a better insight on what actually happened,” Shivani said. “She gave us a perspective — especially on the ghettos — because we didn't really focus on that when we learned about it.”Shivani said hearing from Stein also helped to deepen her interest in the time period and “how people survive on such limited resources.”“It encourages me, almost,” she said, “to experience what the people back then thought — their emotions and hopes.”Lexi agreed that the deeper investigation offered to her class not only helped their understanding but also was applicable to current lessons and world news.“When you see millions of people getting murdered for their religion or if they look a little different ... that's just too far,” Lexi said.Stein's visit came as part of Stroupe's selection by the Seneca Valley Foundation to be a Classrooms Without Borders (CWB) scholarship recipient.Five Seneca Valley teachers will travel to Poland or Greece for two weeks this summer to study the Holocaust and bring the experience back to the district's classrooms.
