Teaching The Holocaust To Future Generations Brantz And Boyd Attend International Conference In Israel By Frank Ruggiero As co-directors of Appalachian State University’s Center for Judaic, Holocaust and Peace Studies, Rennie Brantz and Zohara Boyd are always eager to expand and improve the center’s methods of education. Seldom, though, does this involve airfare. Rennie Brantz, co-director of Appalachian State University’s Center for Judaic, Holocaust and Peace Studies, stops for a photo while attending the Fifth International Conference for Education: Teaching the Holocaust to Future Generations in Jerusalem. Photo submitted Brantz and Boyd recently visited Israel to participate in the Fifth International Conference for Education: Teaching the Holocaust to Future Generations. The four-day conference was held in late June at Yad Vashem, an institute and museum in Jerusalem that specializes in the Nazi Holocaust. “Yad Vashem is an incredible institute,” Brantz said. “It was founded in the ’50s to remember and commemorate those who perished in the Holocaust, and has been the premier international research institute dealing with the Holocaust.” Brantz praised the institute’s methods in presenting the subject, including an extensive collection of diaries and documentation “that makes for a very powerful experience.” He called the museum exhibit “emotionally powerful and memorable,” particularly in the way it uses its architecture to present the Holocaust in a chronological manner, showing photo and video footage of Jewish communities during peacetime, leading up to the rise of Nazi influence, the ghettos, concentration camps and ultimately Adolf Hitler’s ghastly “final solution.” “It just shoves you right into the Holocaust,” Brantz said. “It’s more than just the museum and exhibit – it has an art museum that deals with the art of the Holocaust by those that survived and those that didn’t survive.” The institute also features a “hall of remembrance” for personal contemplation, Brantz said, as well as an area where trees were planted for “righteous Gentiles,” the non-Jews who attempted to save Jewish lives, such as Oskar Schindler. The conference took place at Yad Vashem’s conference center, where Brantz and Boyd attended discussions with some of the world’s premier Holocaust scholars, such as Prof. Yehuda Bauer, who wrote the textbook Brantz and Boyd use for class. Other speakers included Dr. Deborah Lipstadt, director of Emory University’s Rabbi Donald Tam Institute for Jewish Studies. Lipstadt also played a key role in a famous trial in Britain, where a journalist who denied the Holocaust ever existed accused Lipstadt of libeling him in her work. “He brought the case forward and she had to prove he was wrong,” Brantz said. “And she succeeded in that. Ultimately, the judge said he had no case and that he was a fraud, a charlatan, and really discredited him entirely.” Brantz and Boyd also heard from Prof. Lawrence Langer, professor emeritus of English at Simmons College in Massachusetts. Langer coined what Brantz called some of the most important phrases in Holocaust studies, such as “choice-less choices.” “We always think there’s a choice between good and bad, but in the Holocaust, there were choice-less choices,” he said. “Like a mother hiding her two children, when the (Nazi) SS storms the building. The child starts crying, and the mother cover’s the baby’s mouth. The baby is suffocated, but she chose to sacrifice the child to save other people there. Choiceless choices are just something that stick in your mind.” Brantz and Boyd made their own presentation, explaining Appalachian’s efforts in teaching the Holocaust, called “Teaching the Holocaust in the Rural South.” The center was founded as an office in 2002, with the mission of developing educational opportunities for students, teachers and community members. Every year, the center hosts a symposium for public school teachers to educate them on how to teach the Holocaust in the classroom. According to its Web site, “the Office seeks to strengthen tolerance, understanding and remembrance by increasing the knowledge of Jewish culture and history, teaching the history and meaning of the Holocaust, and using these experiences to explore peaceful avenues for human improvement and the prevention of future genocides.” The center is also working towards establishing a minor in Judaic, Holocaust and Peace Studies, which Brantz said could be a combination of several departments, including language, history, philosophy and literary courses. Brantz said the conference gave him and Boyd the opportunity to present ASU’s program to a larger, international audience, “and we were excited about the opportunity to do that and to meet so many scholars from both the United States and Europe and the Middle East and Israel.” Apart from souvenirs, Brantz and Boyd brought back with them different ideas, methods and media for teaching the Holocaust at ASU, such as new sources, memoirs and diaries. “I think, also, the use of artifacts in the museum at Yad Vashem showed how we could better use artifacts and the videos. One particular thing we’re going to make use of is the testimony of the Adolf Eichmann trial in 1961.” Eichmann is considered one of the architects of the Holocaust, who escaped Germany after World War II to South America. He was ultimately captured in 1960 by Israeli Secret Police and was returned to Israel, tried and executed. “Eichmann’s testimony has been placed in this video, and it gives you a sense of who the perpetrators are,” Brantz said. “This is in the late 1960s and he appears forthright, honest and claims to have just been following orders. He was ordered to arrange the transport of millions of Jews to their deaths. You get the picture of a purposeful bureaucrat, who carries out his jobs, feeling no guilt or responsibility for the millions of lives he helped destroy.” Brantz said the footage would be used to help students better understand the mentality of the perpetrators, and how a culture-rich nation like Germany could embark on an effort to destroy all the Jews in Europe. Brantz said the conceptualization of the Holocaust strikes him as very important, particularly since the world is at a point where Holocaust survivors are dying. “When they can no longer tell their story, how are we going to learn from this event? How are we going to present it to young people in the post-survivor generation?” One strategy was presented by Holocaust educator Mary Johnson, who suggested engaging the students in small group discussions. Rather than talking at them, she encouraged “engaging them in a discovery of information,” Brantz explained. “Those kinds of classroom strategies will be valuable, as well.”