Back in mid-April, the Nathan and Esther Pelz Holocaust Education Resource Center teamed up with Wisconsin teacher Maria Prust to host a Holocaust education event, featuring a survivor and a child of one, at Wausau’s Grand Theater. The event drew more than 800 students from several districts in the central part of the state.
Prust is a special education teacher, dual-certified in social studies, at D.C. Everest Senior High School in Weston. Part of her duties include co-teaching social studies classes. Prust, who is not Jewish, works in an area that does not have a large Jewish population.
She and her other social studies co-teachers attended a professional development class two years ago about Holocaust and civil rights education. HERC later reached out, asking her to serve as a Holocaust education fellow.
“It’s all about promoting Holocaust education in the state and also gathering resources of who else is teaching those types of classes, so we have a network, so to speak, to share resources and share ideas.”
At one meeting, Sam Goldberg, HERC’s director, said that the organization was looking to do a “big event” that could gather students from multiple schools.
“I immediately jumped on it, to say Wausau’s got a great spot with the Grand Theater,” which could accommodate a large crowd, Prust said.
The event, which took place on April 17, featured survivor Eva Zaret, along with Nancy Kennedy Barnett, the daughter of survivor George Kennedy. Both came from Hungary.
Elie Wiesel’s “Night” is taught to the entire sophomore class at Prust’s school, and that class was invited to the event. Her school’s English classes also conduct some Holocaust education, which it has tied in with modern lessons about antisemitism.
“Part of how the English classes teach ‘Night’ is they teach ‘upstander’ versus ‘bystander,’ to understand that concept,” Prust said.
She noted that antisemitism is “definitely” on the rise in central Wisconsin, with occasional news reports about antisemitic flyers, including in Wausau last June.
“Especially with kids that I spoke to, we really try to frame it as, ‘This is an authentic learning experience for you, to hear people’s stories that experienced something very tragic, a monumental event in human history,’” Prust said. “To hear their stories firsthand, and/or second hand, is something that you may not hear very often, or for very much longer.”
While she noted that she was nervous heading into the program, “once everybody got there, it was just this amazing feeling of doing on this kind of scale,” she said. She added that other schools have reached out about wanting to participate in similar programs in the future.
“The personal story matters,” Goldberg told local TV station WSAW when they reported on the event. “Our Holocaust Center was built off of the lives and the backs of child survivors who wanted to make sure the story was told. Reading it in a history book isn’t the same. You need the personal story, you want to feel for these people.”
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