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Shoah Research, Education and Documentation Home
Documentation: Rescuing the Evidence
Education: Training, Programs, Materials and Visits to Holocaust Sites
Institutional Allocations
Holocaust Research, Education and Documentation
Education: Passing on the Knowledge
Methods of teaching the Shoah include interactive educational programs with lectures from survivors, visits to sites of Nazi atrocities, public lectures, and the development of high quality educational material.
Formal and informal Shoah educators have to be trained to make these programs and materials effective. The Claims Conference funds numerous organizations that train educators from around the world, including in countries with tiny Jewish communities.
Claims Conference allocations provide scholarships to allow needy students from around the world to visit sites of Nazi atrocities through organizations such as March of the Living, Birthright Israel, Israel Experience, and the Jewish Agency for Israel. The impact of these visits in the context of Holocaust education is extremely important, with young people often remembering for the rest of their lives what they have seen and learned.
Eidim BaMadim: Israel
The Israel Defense Force project called "Eidim BaMadim," Witnesses
in Uniform, sends delegations of army officers from all branches of the service
on a 5-day trip to visit Holocaust-related sites in Poland. With the support
and encouragement of the Claims Conference, the number of these groups going
to Poland has increased from 4 groups in 2002 to 24 groups in 2008 and is anticipated
to be 30 groups in 2009. Pictured is a delegation in front of the memorial sculpture
in Treblinka (Poland), where a memorial ceremony had just taken place. The delegations
conduct memorial ceremonies each day on the site of a ghetto, death camp or
killing site, beginning with the formal parade of the Israeli flag, unit insignia
and a Torah scroll, and including memorial readings, the recitation of Kaddish
and lighting of memorial candles by all the participants. Each delegation is
accompanied by a Holocaust survivor who gives testimony at a site related to
his or her own experience.
The IDF did a follow-up study of more than 700 career officers who participated in the delegations of 2007. For the overwhelming majority, the trip to Poland had the most impact of any values education experience of their entire army service.
Generations Relations: Belarus
The Jewish Community Center Emuna, established in 2002 to serve the educational
and
cultural needs of the Jewish community and to promote Jewish cultural rebirth
in Belarus, will use Claims Conference funds to support a project entitled “Generations
Relations,” in which youths aged 15-22 will visit at home former ghetto prisoners,
Righteous Gentiles, and Nazi victims who were children during the war. The youths
will bring food and celebrate Jewish holidays with these older adults, who in
turn will share their experiences during the war. The youths will compile a
Memory Book to be published and shared with the community. Pictured is a psychological
training session for teenagers participating in the project, aimed at close
cooperation of the participants and preparing them for the work with elderly
people.
Union of Belarusian Jewish Associations and Communities: The Hillel Jewish Student Center in Minsk used a Claims Conference allocation toward “Student Expedition Around Jewish Sites of Belarus.” Approximately 100 students conducted research on the history of specific communities that they visited and attended a two-day training seminar on Jewish history and traditions as well as the Holocaust in Belarus. They then participated in a week-long expedition to several different towns in Belarus to discover traces of Jewish life and restore Jewish cemeteries. The participants are creating a movie, a photo exhibition and a published booklet about their cemetery restoration project.