Holocaust Education

Holocaust Education Summit Teaches How to Cultivate Upstanders By Carolyn Conte

THE ANNUAL SUMMER TEACHERS SUMMIT concluded last week after an intense three-day dive into how to teach students to stand up to injustice.

The Baltimore Jewish Council, Jewish Museum of Maryland, Maryland State Department of Education and the Macks Center for Jewish Education co-hosted and presented this professional development opportunity for teachers in the area of Holocaust education. The conference lasted from Aug. 3 - 5 and was streamed live on Zoom.

This year, each session provided educators with resources to teach and encourage their students to be upstanders, or the opposite of a bystander.

Presenters broke the summit into informational sessions that lasted about an hour each. Many of these were followed by breakout sessions, where teachers could discuss a topic and share ideas in a private Zoom room.

Watchers joined from all over the world, including the Philippines, Australia and Portugal, as well as from across the country such as Arizona, Virginia and, of course, Baltimore.

Because there are so many topics associated with the Holocaust, each year the summit has a different theme. In the past, it has covered rescue and resistance and propaganda, with last year’s theme being Women and the Holocaust.

Ilene Dackman-Alon, JMM’s director of education, kicked off the summit the morning of Aug. 3. She explained that this year’s summit aimed to deepen participants’ understanding of human behavior during the Holocaust and help students realize they have choices.

“[We want to] compel our students to speak up when they think and feel wronged,” Dackman-Alon said to the almost 60 people who joined that morning.

After opening remarks, Holocaust educator and child survivor Miriam Klein Kassenoff took the spotlight. “Instead of turning on each other, why don’t we turn toward each other? That’s what being an upstander is,” Klein Kassenoff said, as she spoke on her own experiences and the power of upstanders.

Following Klein Kassenoff, participants watched a short documentary called “Weapons of the Spirit,” about survivors hiding in the French village of Le Chambon during the Holocaust.

Paul Kutner, historian and DC International School teacher, then spoke and offered tools for teaching the documentary. Kutner showed

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the educators how to use Google Earth’s satellite to give students a tour of the actual streets students of Le Chambon would take. He also showed the teachers tips on how to analyze victims’ diaries, using the diary of survivor Peter Feigl. Kutner pointed out the disappointed tone, what readers can infer from him being able to speak German to his friend, and what was missing from the diary.

Then, to everyone’s joyful surprise, Kutner revealed that Feigl himself was actually on the Zoom call. Watchers turned off their cameras and joined in a Q&A session with the Holocaust survivor.

“That was quite a special moment for us,” DackmonAlon said.

The second day opened with a welcome from Howard Libit, executive director of the BJC. He stated that BJC is the advocacy arm of the Jewish community, and what better type of advocacy is there than education?

Tuesday’s first session was led by Christina Chavarría, program coordinator in the Levine Institute for Holocaust Education at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. This and the other Tuesday morning sessions focused on the point that even in the face of injustice, people had choices.

For example, USHMM historian Edna Friedberg and program coordinator Kim Blevens-Relleva told the story of one teacher who quit her job rather than teach Nazi propaganda. This teacher then created an underground network to help children escape and joined a resistance.

“Over the course of three years, [she] is credited with saving the lives of over 2,000 Jewish children and many adults,” Blevens-Relleva said of the teacher, who was in her 20s at the time.

They also shared accounts where young children stood up for their peers against authority figures. “Children and teenagers have agency and can be empowered. And the values that shape them can drive them for the rest of their lives,” Friedberg said.

COVID-19 also came up. Friedberg said these materials are more difficult to share virtually, as a teacher cannot gauge how the classroom is responding. However, there are other tools to diversify learning around the Holocaust.

Later, during a presentation on why choices matter, one survivor, Kurt Messerschmidt, shared a testimony of a moment during Kristallnacht where he saw people watching as soldiers forced an old man to pick up tiny glass shards on the street. While he does not believe the crowd supported the act of cruelty, “the disapproval was only silence, and silence is what did the harm.”

Another highlight was a testimony by Lola Hahn, JMM board member. Her mother and aunt were both workers in Oskar Schindler’s factory in Poland.

“We hope our days together as a community of learners [helped] you as an educator be more comfortable in bringing more Holocaust studies into the curriculum for your students,” said Jeanette Parmigiani, director of Holocaust Programs for BJC. JT

cconte@midatlanticmedia.com

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Q&A With Dr. Naor Bar-Zeev Deputy Director of Vaccine Center By Carolyn Conte

When will we have the cure to COVID-19? How effective will it be? How will we get it?

Naor Bar-Zeev is a pediatric infectious disease physician and statistical epidemiologist who serves as an associate professor of international health and vaccine science and deputy director of the International Vaccine Access Center at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. BarZeev, who is Jewish, spoke with the JT about what it will take to get vaccinated against the novel coronavirus.

This interview has been condensed.

What are your thoughts on the states’ response to safety concerns at this time? It’s difficult to tell one is right and one is wrong. States are doing the best they can to optimize the response. The critical issue is contact tracking, tracing and isolation. And for the public, they need to be wearing masks when out.

What have you learned about a possible vaccine? I’m not doing any direct work with development, I work on distribution once it is available. ... Once the vaccine is available, there will be an issue of making it available in large enough numbers to vaccinate everybody. There will be a high level of manufacturing [but] if we wait until [enough are ready] we will lose even more people.

We’ll be lucky if we have 2 billion doses by the end of 2021. Countries will have to sort how to distribute it, and once that decision is made, decide on individual locations. And then they have to decide a good mechanism of delivery to children, or what about high-risk communities? These will have to be engaged in the discussion, too. The vaccine has to be safe for the community. Whether that means make it available to shuls or schools or the local town hall; it’s not just a medical novel problem. Logistically, we don’t want people congregating.

Whether it’s possible or feasible is one thing, but the [ideal] idea would be a shot delivered in the mail. But we’re not quite there. We have to design delivery with the communities.

We have to make sure the vaccine is safe itself, too, and test the surveillance of that [to keep an eye on results].

Dr. Naor Bar-Zeev

And it will have to be adaptive to where the hot spots [of breakouts] are.

At the soonest, when could you predict a vaccine to be available to the U.S. population? We have [vaccines] but they just need to be proven to be effective. So that means a wide trial with all ages. ... Then it goes through licensing after all the data is collected. Then it can be manufactured. Realistically, it is hard to pinpoint, but it is unlikely that you can get one by the end of 2020. Maybe, for healthcare workers, by 2021. Do you believe there will have to be a difference in dosages for older adults? The main issue is older adults have the most responsive immune system. What is generally not safe may be needed to be effective for older adults. It would be wonderful to have one vaccine, but it’s possible we will need different ones for older adults, or more frequent dosages.

We also don’t know how long the vaccine’s effect could last, and if that could be different for different ages. If it wanes and we’re back to where we started that would be no good.

How reliable are the current testings on chimpanzees to the predictability of whether it will work with humans? It is a necessary step. If it’s safe

particularly to one biological animal similar to humans, meaning primates, it’s a good indication to move it to human trials. Then we need to demonstrate on humans that it’s safe and efficacious. The more it’s evaluated, the more I will be comfortable to say it’s safe.

There’s only been 1,500 people vaccinated so far. We need many more people before I can say something is safe. So we’ll increase the number again soon. The next trials will vaccinate 30,000 each.

So the fact it’s safe in animals is a necessary step to get there, but the real results are in humans. The worst thing that’d happen is if [we went straight to testing on] people to cut corners, and that causes harm. That would be terrible for all vaccines, because people’s trust

The critical issue is contact tracking, tracing and isolation. And for the public, they need to be wearing masks when out.

in vaccines would go down. The population does have to be prepared, learn from it.

What will that next phase of testing look like? So we break it into Phase 1, 2 and 3.

Before Phase 1 of human trials, you have a whole bunch of experiments, then to animal testing.

We haven’t seen the results of Phase 2 yet, but are expecting to move to 3 soon. .... At the end of Phase 3, we can roll out the vaccines and begin a Phase 4. But when we get there, it also raises an ethical concern: What if the vaccine kills one in a million? Would you still give it to children?

These are not black and white questions, but there is a lot to consider.

What other challenges and questions like that must we consider? So I already told you about distribution: who will get it first, how do we distribute it, and remember that equity does not mean the same. It means everyone will be protected equally.

But also, what if we have 1 million doses and people over age 50 require two?

And how are we affording it? And what if 70% is efficacious, or even just 50%? Do we still spend the money on it?

And what if there is no other option for a long time? The RotaShield vaccine in the ‘90s caused a condition in children, but it took 10 years for a new vaccine to come around.

You have these questions of what is practical versus the specifics of it.

Above all, though, people must remember: A vaccine is not the end all be all. It won’t make it go away. Particularly, not initially. Obviously we still need one. But, really, the idea of social distancing, washing your hands, being careful — this will still be crucial. JT

cconte@midatlanticmedia.com

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