Liberated men, Dachau concentration camp, May 1945. Photo by American Col. Alexander Zabin. USHMM.
Liberated men, Dachau, 1945

NORTH CAROLINA COUNCIL ON THE HOLOCAUST

COMMEMORATION
Sun., May 3, 2009
TEACHER WORKSHOPS
2008-09 Schedule
TEACHER'S GUIDE
available online
PUBLICATIONS
Videos
LINKS
teaching resources
TRAVELING EXHIBITS
Kindertransport
Dr. Seuss in WWII
LET YOUR CHILDREN TELL
traveling play
REGIONAL LIBRARIES
west, central, east
SPEAKERS
in North Carolina
CONTACT US
contribute

The North Carolina Council on the Holocaust is a state agency in the N.C. Department of Public Instruction, established in 1981 by an executive order of Governor James B. Hunt, Jr., and authorized in 1985 by the General Assembly. The Council is composed of twenty-four members, of whom six are Holocaust survivors or first-generation lineal descendants of survivors. Through its education programs and annual commemorations, the Council strives to help prevent atrocities similar to the systematic program of mass murder by the Nazis of six million Jews and others, including gypsies (Roma), homosexuals, handicapped persons, and religious and political dissidents, from 1933 to 1945.

Visit us at the annual conferences of the North Carolina Council on the Social Studies, the North Carolina English Teachers Association, and the North Carolina School Library Media Association.

NewSubmit your family members' experiences of escaping or surviving the Holocaust to the website, My Jewish Legacy, created as a Bat-Mitvah project by Elyse Bodenheimer of Charlotte, NC. See Links below.

TEACHER'S GUIDE

Holocaust Teacher's GuideThe Holocaust: A North Carolina Teachers' Resource, is now available online at UNC-TV's website Auschwitz: Inside the Nazi State: The North Carolina Connection. The Council gratefully acknowledges UNC-TV for this service.

Proceed through the guide section by section (you can download each section separately), or print the entire guide as a Word document.

The 140-page illustrated guide contains
  • the background and history of the Holocaust, appropriate for middle and high school students
  • the personal experiences of Holocaust survivors who made their postwar homes in North Carolina
  • lesson plans with reproducible handouts
  • glossary and timeline.

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

TEACHER WORKSHOPS

Seven to nine workshops are held throughout the school year at sites across the state. Over 6000 teachers and administrators have attended Council workshops since 1989.

2008-2009 WORKSHOPS_____________
Nov. 17, 2008: Wilkesboro, Wilkes County
Dec. 10, 2008: Lenoir, Caldwell County
Feb. 4, 2009: Newton, Cabarrus County
Feb. 18, 2009: Durham, Durham County
Feb. 23, 2009: Fayetteville, Cumberland County
Feb. 27, 2009: Monroe, Union County
Mar. 4, 2009: Greensboro, Guilford County
Mar. 25, 2009: Enka, Buncombe County


E-Mail Linda Scher, Education Coordinator, for more information and to register for a workshop. (brisket234@aol.com)

The one-day workshops
  • are offered at no charge (substitute pay provided)
  • are open to all North Carolina middle and high school teachers and administrators
  • take place across the state
  • provide to all participants the updated resource guide, The Holocaust: A North Carolina Teachers' Resource, the CD "A Teacher's Guide to the Holocaust" (Florida Council on the Holocaust/Florida Dept. of Education), and a certificate of participation for renewal credit
  • present a historical overview by the noted Holocaust scholar, Dr. Karl Schleunes of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro
  • feature a Holocaust survivor, now a Raleigh resident, who recounts her experiences in the Majdanek concentration camp in Poland
  • are especially useful for social studies teachers of U.S. history, world civilizations, and the 6th-grade curriculum (Europe and the former Soviet Union); and for language arts teachers who use Holocaust works such as The Diary of Anne Frank, Number the Stars, and Elie Wiesel's Night.
Therese Divak
A young girl in the U.N. DP camp in Germany for homeless children, many of whom had been brought from eastern Europe to Germany for forced labor or "Aryanization." Many did not know their real names. Such photographs were published in newspapers to help reunite the children with any surviving relatives.

The price of apathy towards public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.
Plato

TRAVELING EXHIBITS

The Council sponsors three traveling exhibits for use at no charge in public libraries and in middle and high schools across the state. For more information and to schedule an exhibit, contact the Exhibit Coordinator in your region.

Kindertransport children 1. The Kindertransport Journey: Memory Into History. This exhibit consists of seventeen panels of photos, personal testimony, and historical background. Each school that sponsors the exhibit receives teacher packets and a free copy of the video Into the Arms of Strangers for its library (download the teacher's guide from this site).

The full exhibit can be seen online from the Kindertransport Association.


Dr. Suess Wants You; exhibit 2. Dr. Seuss Wants You!: The Political Cartoons of Dr. Seuss, 1941-1942. This exhibit consists of fourteen panels, each of which highlights one Seuss political cartoon against fascism, anti-Semitism, and bigotry, published in PM, a New York daily newspaper.

The full exhibit can be seen online from the Center for Holocaust and Humanity Education.


Faces of Resistance 3. Faces of Resistance: Women in the Holocaust. The Council has recently acquired a third traveling exhibit, created by The Holocaust Research and Studies Center of Moreshet, the Mordechai Anielevich Memorial. More information to come.


For more information and to schedule an exhibit, contact the Exhibit Coordinator in your region.


LET YOUR CHILDREN TELL

Let Your Children Tell This riveting one-hour play is based on the actual experiences of three young people in Europe during the Holocaust -- Jewish and gypsy (Roma) -- who struggle to survive physically and emotionally under Nazi tyranny

Written by North Carolina playwright and producer Brenda Schleunes with support from the N.C. Council on the Holocaust, Let Your Children Tell has been presented to high school and college classes across the state. For more information, contact the Touring Theater Ensemble of North Carolina.

"No stronger appeal for humanity and understanding of the evils of hate and prejudice can be imagined than the actual words of these children."
Abe D. Jones, Jr., Greensboro News & Record

"The horrible coincidence of the Sept. 11 events makes Let Your Children Tell an even more important drama than when it was commissioned last winter."
Leslie Mizell, Greensboro News & Record

ANNUAL COMMEMORATION

Holocaust Remembrance Day (Yom Hashoah in Hebrew) is a day set aside for remembering the victims of the Holocaust and for reminding Americans of what can happen to civilized people when bigotry, hatred, and indifference reign. The United States Holocaust Memorial Council, created by act of Congress in 1980, was mandated to lead the nation in civic commemorations and to encourage appropriate Remembrance observances throughout the country.

Gizella AbramsonThe 2009 State of North Carolina Holocaust Commemoration:

Date: Sunday, May 3
Site: Meredith College (Jones Chapel), Raleigh
Featured Speaker: Gizella Abramson, longtime resident of Raleigh; native of Poland, survivor of the Majdanek concentration camp in Poland.

Ms. Abramson has contributed countless hours speaking to student groups across the state of North Carolina. We are honored to announce Ms. Abramson as the 2009 Commemoration Featured Speaker.

Schedule:
1:30-2:50: Panel discussion with Ms. Abramson and Dr. Carolyn Happer, historian, Meredith College.
3:00-5:00: Commemoration ceremony with an address by Ms. Abramson, presentations by public officials and local clergy, a candle-lighting ceremony, and musical numbers by individual performers and the Enloe High School Chamber Choir. There is no charge, and all are welcome.

Past Commemoration Speakers:
Esther Starobin Esther Starobin (2008)
Kindertransport survivor from Germany; sent to England at age two, arrived in the U.S. at age ten and reunited with her brother and two sisters.
Morris Glass Morris Glass (2007)
Raleigh resident and Holocaust survivor of Nazi ghettoes and camps, including Auschwitz and Dachau.
Kwame Braun Kwame Braun (2007)
Dept. of Film Studies, University of California at Santa Barbara. Co-producer of Video Portraits of Survival (two vols.), interview portraits of Holocaust survivors in the Santa Barbara area.
Christopher Browning Christopher Browning (2006)
Professor of History, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Renowned scholar of the Holocaust and author of the ground-breaking study (1992) Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland.
Marianne Balshone Marianne Balshone (2005)
Hungarian survivor who credits the renowned Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenburg with saving her and several relatives.
Joshua Greene Joshua Greene . (2004)
Producer of the Emmy-nominated documentary Witness: Voices from the Holocaust (1998, with Shiva Kumar, broadcast on PBS in 2000), and author of Justice at Dachau: The Trials of an American Prosecutor
Robert Jan van Pelt Robert Jan van Pelt (2003)
Professor of Cultural History and Theory, Waterloo University, Ontario, Canada. Author of The Case for Auschwitz: Evidence from the Irving Trial.
Nesse Godin Nesse Godin (2002)
Survivor of the ghetto in Shauliai, Lithuania, and the Stutthof concentration camp in Poland.
Aaron Hass Aaron Hass (2001)
Professor of psychology, California State University-Dominguez Hills. A son of survivors and author of The Aftermath: Living with the Holocaust.
Nelly Toll Nelly Toll (2000)
Holocaust survivor and author of Behind the Secret Window: A Memoir of a Hidden Childhood during World War Two.
I pray you to believe what I have said about Buchenwald. I reported what I saw and heard, but only part of it. For most of it, I have no words.
Edward R. Murrow, reporting from the liberated Buchenwald camp, 1945.

REGIONAL LIBRARIES
Teachers may borrow Holocaust education materials at no cost from several regional centers.
PUBLICATIONS and VIDEOS
Holocaust Teacher's Guide Teacher's Guide. The Holocaust: North Carolina Teachers' Resource, by Linda Scher. Updated and expanded edition, 2002, 2005. 158 pages.
Available through teacher workshops and online at UNC-TV's website Auschwitz: Inside the Nazi State: The North Carolina Connection.
  • Classroom activities with background information on anti-Semitism, Nazism, and the Holocaust, personalized with the stories of survivors who became North Carolina residents.
  • Seven overview sections with ten lessons that include 27 reproducible handouts.
  • Timeline, glossary, bibliography, and the Maurice Ogden poem "The Hangman."
Book. Witnesses to the Horror: North Carolinians Remember the Holocaust, by Cecile Holmes White. 1987. 137 pages. Age 12+.
First-person accounts of eleven survivors, three children of survivors, and three servicemen; with photographs, an historical overview, and appendices. Available in public secondary school libraries in North Carolina.

Video. The Holocaust: A Personal North Carolina History. 15 minutes. VHS. Grade 8+.
First-person accounts of concentration camp survivors and American servicemen that reveal how the Holocaust continues to affect these North Carolina citizens and their families. Available through the North Carolina Museum of History Media Loan Program. $1.00 per video (for one week) plus return postage. Order form available on the site.

Video. Ripples in Time. 60 minutes (in two parts). VHS. Grade 8+.
Personal stories of the Holocaust from Jews who escaped to the U.S., Jewish Americans who served in World War II, and American servicemen who liberated concentration camps. Available through the North Carolina Museum of History Media Loan Program. $1.00 per video (for one week) plus return postage. Order form available on the site.

Video. Lessons from Anne Frank: North Carolina Students Respond. 15 minutes. VHS. Grade 6+.
Produced by junior high students in Greensboro, NC. An opportunity for students to respond to and ask questions about the Holocaust. Available through the Council; E-Mail the Education Coordinator.

SPEAKERS
Upon request, the Council will provide names of Holocaust survivors and experts who present talks to classes and other groups. E-mail the Council Chairman, Michael Abramson, for speaker information.

LINKS

U.S. Holocaust Memorial MuseumUnited States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC. The first site to visit for Holocaust history, photographic archives, online exhibitions, and educational resources including
Teaching About The Holocaust, including the museum's 138-page downloadable teacher's guide, and the Holocaust Encyclopedia.

Florida Ctr. for Instructional Technology logoA Teacher's Guide to the Holocaust
Rich website accompanying the CD provided to all teachers attending the N.C. Council's workshops. From the Florida Dept. of Education.

Facing History and Ourselves logoFacing History and Ourselves
Highly valuable program that leads students and teachers in studying the historical development of the Holocaust and other examples of collective violence -- with the goal that they may learn to combat indifference with civic participation.

Appalachian State University 2009 symposiumRemembering the Holocaust: A Summer Symposium for Educators and the Community, July 18-July 23, 2009, Appalachian State University, Office of Judaic, Holocaust, and Peace Studies.

Teaching ToleranceTeaching Tolerance, from the Southern Poverty Law Center. Extensive offering of worthwhile materials (free) for teachers. Also visit the Home Page of the Teaching Tolerance program with links to materials for parents, teenagers, and pre-teen children.

Lest We Forget logoLest We Forget
Holocaust teaching resources for teachers in the Asheville area -- including traveling exhibits, a lending library, a poster series, and speakers' bureau, from the The Center for Diversity Education, Asheville, NC.

StarChoosing to Remember: From the Shoah to the Mountains
Online exhibit documenting the experiences of over thirty Holocaust survivors in the Asheville area, based on a 1999 exhibition created by the Center for Diversity Education and partially funded by the North Carolina Council on the Holocaust. On the site of the UNC-Asheville Center for Jewish Studies.

Down Home photoDown Home: Jewish Life in North Carolina
Multimedia project of the Jewish Heritage Foundation of North Carolina including a documentary film, video, book, and museum exhibition.

Elyse and grandfatherThe Levy-Loewenstein Holocaust Collection, Greensboro College.
An extensive collection of scholarly monographs, personal memoirs, and reference books detailing the history of the Holocaust, provided through the generosity of Richard and Jane Levy.

NewNewMy Jewish Legacy . Begun as a Bat-Mitzvah project, Elyse Bodenheimer of Charlotte, NC, offers her website as "a starting place for kids and teens to share stories about their grandparents’ journeys in escaping or surviving the Holocaust." Includes the experiences of her great-grandfather and a link to submit others' experiences for her website.

Other Southern associations and state agencies on the Holocaust:


Holocaust Memorial Museum crest
NORTH CAROLINA COUNCIL ON THE HOLOCAUST
N.C. Dept. of Public Instruction
301 N. Wilmington St., Raleigh, NC 27601
www.ncpublicschools.org/holocaust_council
Michael Abramson, Chairman (919-787-9939;
mabramson@nc.rr.com)

Contact Us:
Chairman, Michael Abramson, about Council issues and speaker contacts.
Education Coordinator, Linda Scher, about teacher workshops.
Regional Exhibit Coordinators about the three traveling exhibits.
Webmaster, Marianne Wason, about the website.

For information on other Council programs, see information and e-mail contacts on this page.

Contribute to the North Carolina Holocaust Foundation
to support the Council's teacher workshops and other programs in North Carolina.

Updated March 23, 2009.

Mauthausen camp liberation, May 1945
Survivors gather around an American military vehicle in the Mauthausen
concentration camp, Austria, between May 5 and May 15, 1945.

Photograph of Bert Bodenheimer and his grand-daughter, Elyse Bodenheimer, courtesy of the Bodenheimer family.

Photograph of Gizella Abramson courtesy of the University of North Carolina--Pembroke.

Photographs courtesy of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum:
--Liberated men, Dachau concentration camp, May 1945. Photograph by Col. Alexander Zabin, an American soldier from Malverne, Long Island, New York, serving with the 4th Auxiliary Surgical Group in the US Third Army when he visited Dachau in mid-May 1945. He had landed in Normandy on the day after D-day and moved with the Third Army through France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, and Czechoslovakia. Courtesy of Col. Alexander Zabin. #62258.
--Therese Divak in U.N. displaced persons camp, Germany, 1945-1948. Courtesy of Lilo Plaschkes. #86764.
--Survivors around an American military vehicle, Mauthausen concentration camp, Austria, May 1945. Courtesy of Frank Brooks. #08297.

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
Source unknown (often attributed incorrectly to 18th-century Irish philosopher and statesman Edmund Burke)