Lauren Crampton

Owing to the generosity of the HERC board, I had the opportunity to attend the Jewish Foundation for the Righteous (JFR) Advanced Seminar for Teachers from January 17 through January 19 in Newark, New Jersey along with 20 teachers and Holocaust educators from Alabama, Florida, New Jersey, Maryland and South Carolina. The Advanced Seminar is an annual graduate-level program for teachers that features lectures by preeminent Holocaust scholars on topics of history of the Holocaust and antisemitism. The annual seminar is open to educators who have at least five years of teaching experience and are at least five years from retirement. The program is open to Holocaust educators and middle and high school teachers who have attended the JFR Summer Institute for Teachers (which I attended last June at the same location).

“Each of these educators has already distinguished themselves through their commitment to teaching the Holocaust in their schools and towards furthering their own education in understanding the antisemitism which led to the Holocaust,” said JFR Executive Vice President Stanlee Stahl. “By attending this intensive, graduate-level program, educators will gain a deeper understanding of the history of the Holocaust, which will increase their effectiveness in the classroom and enable them to mentor other colleagues who teach the subject.”

Guest speakers at this year’s seminar, included Professor Emeritus Peter Hayes of Northwestern University; Professor Daniel Greene of Northwestern University, and Professor Thomas Doherty of Brandeis University. Unfortunately, due to an approaching snow storm, the program was abbreviated by one day and Professor Kirsten Fermaglich of Michigan State University canceled her flight and the participants rebooked flights to leave before arrival of the storm. Peter Hayes specializes in the histories of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust and, in particular, in the conduct of the nation’s largest corporations during the Third Reich, and published the book Why? Explaining the Holocaust, which was featured in Ken Burns’ documentary, The United States and the Holocaust. He presented two lectures focusing on the problematic entanglements of the German and American governments and multinational corporations, before, during, and after the Holocaust. Daniel Greene also focused his lectures on topics relating the relations between the United States government and Nazi Germany, which came directly from his book, Americans and the Holocaust, that was also assigned for the seminar. This book serves as both a textbook and a museum catalogue of the Americans and the Holocaust Exhibit at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. Finally, Thomas Doherty presented on the topic of movies and the relationship between the film industries in Hollywood in the United States and Nazi Germany.

In addition to academic component of the trip, I had the privilege of accompanying my seminar roommate and colleague, Yara Lugo from the Florida Holocaust Museum, to dinner at the home of Jaqueline Albin, a Holocaust survivor who was born in 1937 in France and survived the Holocaust as child with parents. Her story is available on the Florida Holocaust Museum website https://www.thefhm.org/pressroom/story-3-jacqueline-albin/. As valuable and substantive as the Advanced Seminar curriculum was, it was meeting Jacqueline that made the experience truly meaningful.