Holocaust education is an investment in peace | Opinion

Ignorance begets bigotry. The executive director of MorseLife's Holocaust Learning Experience writes that teaching Palm Beach County's schoolchildren about the Holocaust helps them see early on how to distinguish between historical fact and extremist propaganda.

As technology enables ignorance and misinformation to spread like wildfire, it’s never been more important to teach the lessons of the Holocaust than it is today. Each heartbreaking image from conflicts around the world, especially against Jewish people, reminds us that war is not the answer to the world’s problems. Its toll is devastating, and its results are destabilizing.

As executive director of the Holocaust Learning Experience at MorseLife, I’ve spent the last several months speaking with teachers around the nation across different curricula such as social studies, history and government. I repeatedly hear from them that, while we have great Holocaust museums and resource centers, most of the time, students have no real understanding of what they are looking at.

In 2022, MorseLife, a 40-year-old nonprofit that serves more than 3,600 seniors every day on its campus in West Palm Beach and through its community outreach programs, implemented the Holocaust Learning Experience to engage 5th to 12th graders in Palm Beach County with lessons from the Holocaust. The core of this program, the Signature Education Model, gives school districts access to the program’s full range of teachers’ guides and turn-key lessons consisting of multisensory pre-recorded videos and first-hand Holocaust survivor testimonials.

In preparation for the school year, we trained hundreds of teachers throughout the state to access these uniform lessons that meet the state’s mandatory standards and benchmarks in Holocaust education, potentially allowing for the education of tens of thousands of students who might otherwise never get the opportunity to learn accurate facts about the Holocaust.

Lessons of the Holocaust compel us to recognize the flaw in human nature that allows people to succumb to hatred and demonize “others” who may be different. Education, especially teaching historically accurate facts and the poignant truth, has the potential to realign our society’s moral compass and help our youth distinguish between myth, lies and reality.

Teaching our children to be positive role models includes helping them recognize the danger of silence in the face of extremist propaganda and hateful speech, which can easily lead to physical acts of violence. Our hope is that these discussions will spur thoughtful reflection about our roles in becoming better global citizens.

Locally, at the Holocaust Learning Experience Training Center on the MorseLife campus in West Palm Beach, students engage in a lesson moderated by an expert and then gather at Gendelman Children’s Holocaust Memorial, a 25-foot bronze tree sculpture created by renowned artist Bruce Gendelman. This giant memorial is adorned with over 5,000 hand-painted ceramic butterflies, many made by Palm Beach County students. These butterflies are part of The Butterfly Project’s worldwide art memorial to display 1.5 million ceramic butterflies, one for every Jewish child who perished at the hands of the Nazis.

Our most powerful investment in peace is a balanced and accurate education. The more people are equipped with facts and given the gift of education, the more secure this world may be for our children and grandchildren.

Leigh Routman is executive director of the Holocaust Learning Experience at MorseLife.