High school students learn about the Holocaust through art To mark the closing of an exhibit in its gallery, the Green School hosted an interactive learning lab with a group of high school students – members of Interfaith Youth Miami, an initiative to promote understanding and foster new friendships between various faith communities. The exhibit, “All This Has Come Upon Us…” featured 42 works by awardwinning artist, author and physician Mark Podwal. Podwal’s collection illustrates historical tragedies and injustices suffered by the Jewish people since the days of Pharaoh.
Expulsion 1492 by Mark Podwal Psalm 119:54 Your laws are songs to me wherever I may live. King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain expelled from their lands the largest and most distinguished Jewish community in Europe. Jews who converted to Catholicism were welcome to stay.
The students were part of a Holocaust learning lab exercise. The original exhibition premiered in April 2014 at the Terezin Ghetto Museum outside of Prague. In 2015, it was on display at the Jewish Museum of Florida-FIU (JMOF). Oren Stier, the director of the Holocaust and Genocide Studies program, led the learning lab, giving students a tour of the exhibit and providing historical and contextual information about the paintings, the Psalms as well as the religion and history of the Jewish people. The event was funded by Auschwitz survivor Tibor Hollo’s gift to the Holocaust and Genocide Studies program. “This active learning exercise was about using the exhibition as a tool to facilitate a discussion about antisemitism and the Holocaust,” Stier explained. “I wanted the students to learn something about the experiences of hate and intolerance and how that is relevant today. Visual culture is a tool for expression and interfaith conversation. Stier added, “I don’t want these students to just look at art in a museum. I want them to see. When you really look, you really see, and then you really understand.” Alexander Sutton, the founder of the high school interfaith group and a rising senior at Coral Gables Senior High School, said that one of the best parts of the activity was learning more about the interconnectedness between the three Abrahamic religions – Christianity, Islam and Judaism – throughout the lab. “I can relate to this as a non-Jew,” Sutton said. “The lab was extremely enriching. As a group, we hadn’t done an in-depth look into faith and history yet. We went deep today. The big takeaway for me is that the history of the Jewish people is even longer and filled with more oppression than people often realize.”
Creating a Just, Peaceful and Prosperous World
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