Ted Neitzke IV, who is not Jewish, had never heard directly from a Holocaust survivor.
An educator, Neitzke had read extensively about the genocide. He researched. He wrote. But it was all, as he said, “through one-dimensional, breathless texts.”
Then he met southeastern Wisconsin’s Eva Zaret, a survivor. Zaret, of Budapest, Hungary, shared her experience on Neitzke’s “Smart Thinking” self-improvement podcast.
“We began to realize we’re running out of primary source voices,” Neitzke said. “But we thought, in the Milwaukee area, how can we start to capture these great voices and these both horrific life experiences and the lessons from them?”
For a 2021 episode of the “Smart Thinking” podcast, Zaret joined Neitzke to do just that. She shared photos and told stories of horror, of resilience.
Neitzke’s Holocaust education journey didn’t stop with his podcast. He is now transitioning to a new format – meant not just to preserve stories but also to make educational resources available to Wisconsin students.
The most powerful part of the 2021 podcast experience, Neitzke said, was having his daughter in the room to hear Zaret’s words. Neitzke’s daughter, Grace, is studying to become a history teacher.
“My daughter will be alive for the 100th anniversary of the end and the beginning of the Holocaust,” he said. “No Holocaust survivor will be. But Grace will be able to now transfer her personal experiences and knowledge to her teaching.
Beyond his daughter’s classroom, Neitzke, the CEO of the nonprofit Cooperative Educational Service Agency 6 and the mayor of the city of Port Washington, wants to preserve survivors’ stories so others can learn. And he wants to tell those stories in a consumable format – “legacy pieces,” he said.
So, Neitzke is producing video recordings of survivors detailing their experiences.
“That’s the power of capturing this on video, is that these stories from people, while two-dimensional, will never be lost,” he said.
Neitzke’s videos are joining the library of primary sources available through the Nathan and Esther Pelz Holocaust Education Resource Center, where he serves as a board member. The endeavor creates resources for Wisconsin educators, who under 2021 Wisconsin Act 30 are required to teach about the Holocaust and other genocides.
Teachers, Neitzke said, can break the videos down into curricular units. He envisions them pausing a video to reflect on different aspects of survivors’ experiences. For example, they can open a map and show students just how far people traveled, perhaps from Warsaw, Poland, to Siberia.
“Great teachers can pull so much out of just a simple conversation to bring relevance to everybody,” Neitzke said. “That’s my personal visionary goal for this.”
The whole Neitzke family has adopted the cause. In addition to his daughter’s plans to teach history, Neitzke said both his wife and son teach social studies. He said he is willing to travel anywhere to bear witness to and preserve these stories.
On top of creating primary sources, Neitzke said his goal is to prepare people to be tolerant advocates. People who learn about the resiliency of the Jewish community – even if they’ve never personally met that population – can advocate.
“That’s what I always wanted for every one of my students, is to understand the world in which they live,” Neitzke said. “At the very minimum, they can advocate for themselves and then others.”
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