January 27 is International Holocaust Remembrance Day, and since teaching the Holocaust became a required part of Connecticut’s secondary-level social studies curriculum five years ago teachers at schools around the state have been taking on the important work of educating high schoolers about this dark period in history.
When E.O. Smith High School history teacher Joe Goldman was asked to work on a specialized course on genocide studies, in addition to feeling honored, he recalls immediately feeling the gravity of the assignment.
Goldman, who has been teaching for 14 years and has served as adjunct faculty for UConn’s Teacher Certification Program, knew that the course would have to explore difficult topics in a way that was accurate, thoughtful, and meaningful. CEA-Retired member Jim Loughead had originally developed the E.O. Smith course on genocide that forms the basis for Goldman’s work in this area, and Goldman says, “He deserves enormous credit for building the foundation of our current class.”
The power of primary sources
Through books, movies, museum visits, and classroom discourse, Goldman leads students through the events leading up to the Nazis’ systematic persecution of Jews and others throughout eastern Europe. But perhaps the most powerful learning comes from direct conversations with Holocaust survivors, witnesses to the painful history students have been studying. Survivor testimony and first-person perspective, Goldman says, are essential to his teaching of history.
In one Zoom meeting, students heard from Dr. Leon Chameides, a child during the Holocaust whose father arranged for him to be hidden by the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. Given a new identity and sent to live in a monastery in the mountains when he was seven, Chameides survived the war; his parents did not. Years later, he immigrated to the U.S., where he became a leading pediatric cardiologist in Hartford.
For student Collin Moffitt, hearing from Chameides helped put a face on the horrors of the Holocaust.
“Six million people? When you’re given that number, it’s just a statistic at this point,” he told NPR reporter and PBS correspondent Diane Orson. “You don’t have faces. You don’t have names. And just seeing a real survivor talk about their experience puts things more in perspective.”
Orson interviewed Goldman and several of his students in 2022 for a PBS Cutline special on the rise of antisemitism in Connecticut and efforts to combat it through education.
Fellow student Ben Peters added that today’s political rhetoric and hate speech is reminiscent of extreme ideas that took root in the 1930s—language that people became numb to and that eventually led to persecution and genocide. “People would say things like, ‘Well, they say these bad things, but they’re probably not going to do them. It’ll be fine.’”
Goldman says that central to his coursework is not only exploring history but also examining current ideologies of hatred toward others, including anti-LGBTQ and anti-immigration sentiments. We spoke to him in the fall about his teaching.
Connecticut has experienced a rise in antisemitic incidents. Have you witnessed this?
I have at times observed students snickering or making light of antisemitism or Nazism, although overall at my school, students treat the issue with the weight and respect it deserves, and they take it seriously. E.O Smith does a lot to raise the issues of equity and discrimination, and there’s a culture of unwillingness to accept discrimination—but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen quietly or out of sight. My reaction is to encourage students to think about creating a culture that doesn’t make it comfortable for anyone to speak or behave in discriminatory or offensive ways, and for teachers never to look the other way.
‘Never again’ can seem hard to believe given the rise in hate crimes and other movements we might have thought were behind us. After so much progress on understanding and inclusion, how do you reconcile the rise in intolerance?
In our classes we look at the fact that hate groups often thrive in areas that are economically struggling, so we look at economic access and injustice. Those families are more exposed and perhaps more vulnerable to hate groups. There are political aspects too.
I usually prepare students in my classes with the message that there are misconceptions people have about one another. I tell them it’s OK to ask questions, and I ask about stereotypes or conspiracy theories they may have heard. We trace the histories of these beliefs.
How do you explain the rise of the Nazi party to your students?
One thing I’ve done that’s interesting is give students the Nazi party platform from 1932—without telling them that’s what it is—and I winnow it down and ask if students are open to voting for the candidate with that platform. Understandably, students are shocked that this was Hitler’s platform and that even Jews voted for Hitler. So we grapple with why and what the priorities were at that time—repercussions from the Treaty of Versailles, people looking for a strong leader, someone to address the economy and violence in the streets.
Tell us about the power of survivors’ stories.
This is really important to me and where I get very impassioned about the class I teach. We talk to survivors, and it’s very powerful. I’ve learned that historically Holocaust survivors’ testimony was considered unreliable, even during the Nuremberg trials; chief U.S. prosecutor Robert Jackson and others thought it was misremembered. They relied instead on documents, which they considered more useful pieces of evidence.
Teaching about the Holocaust similarly relied heavily on textbooks over survivor testimony. Now we see excluding testimony as a disservice, because we leave students with the impression of a dehumanized population. How powerful when someone who experienced this horrible history comes and talks about it. Ruth Weiner came to my class to talk about escaping via Kindertransport, and I’ve never seen students break down in this way over the human connection. One student ran after Ruth crying that she was happy she survived.
Ruth called on students to turn on their lights one at a time in a dark room so that one by one they might drive away ignorance and darkness. Our students sent an illustration of their illuminated cell phones on the floor in the dark room and sent it to her.
Have you talked with students about the current war between Israel and Hamas?
Yes, the conflict in the Middle East has come up, and I have pushed my students to understand the complexity of the issue. Since the genocide class I teach focuses on humanity and the art of seeing those who might not share a common identity as human and worthy of dignity, I feel it’s relevant. This, to me, is the root of the sort of work we have been trying to do at E.O. Smith and will keep working toward.
As it happens, this semester I am partnering with Connecticut author Daphne Geismar, who wrote the book Invisible Years about her family’s experience during the Holocaust. She has been sharing her family’s story with my students, and it turned into a collaboration spanning multiple weeks and culminating in a project where students write an interwoven narrative using the voices of victims of genocide from the past and weaving them together around a core theme. It has been a powerful and rewarding experience for students.
Daphne’s father, a Holocaust survivor, was one of many Jews who relocated to Israel following World War II, where he was taken straight into the army.
“This is a very difficult subject,” he says. “I have the philosophy that I don’t want to do to somebody else what I don’t want done to myself. The Palestinians have rights.” He said he would be angry if “somebody came, took my house away, threw me out, and said, ‘You have no home.’ I know how that feels.”
Daphne has called the violence in Israel senseless, and her relative Chaja also has a unique perspective on the violence that does not fit with what many view as the perspective of a supporter of Israel. While Daphne hasn’t shared her views with the class yet, we have plans for her to address the issue with them in a way that will help students see the nuance of the situation, and, hopefully, recognize the humanity on both sides of the conflict and the reality that each group does not share only one common vision or perspective of the conflict.
In class we have recognized the sharp rise in antisemitic acts as well as the increase in acts of anti-Muslim hate. We emphasize the steps we can take individually to call out, correct, and address that sort of hate. Ultimately, it’s critical that students understand how the broader historical issues we are studying are connected to them on a personal level.
They have the ability to shine light on these issues locally and can be part of the fabric of a stronger community that rejects hate.
It’s important to understand the darker parts of our histories if we want to create a brighter future.
Goldman was honored last year by Voices of Hope. A nonprofit educational organization created by descendants of Holocaust survivors across Connecticut, Voices of Hope raises social consciousness by connecting people to the inhumanity of the Holocaust and other genocides through excellence in teaching.
