thursday, september 19, 2013 Page B1
living
SECTION
B
What’s On? n Dining guiDe n Whats COOking n Real estate n ClassifieD n seRviCe guiDe n Business CaRD DiReCtORy
The Bronx Science Holocaust Museum Teaching students to take a moral stand By Shant Shahrigian sshah@riverdalepress.com
T
he Holocaust Museum and Studies Center at the Bronx High School of Science features items donated by local Holocaust survivors to serve as a testament that prejudice and hatred can devastate human souls and nations. The museum recently moved into three new rooms at the school to showcase artifacts from the Holocaust, including early examples of Nazi propaganda, an original translation from the Nuremberg trials and uniforms worn by concentration camp prisoners. These rooms are a grim testament to the potential brutality and depravity of human nature. Still, they convey reminders and lessons for present and future generations. Student docents enrolled in a distinctive course centering on the Holocaust and the contents of the museum guide tours for classmates and students from other schools. Several students said that examining the documentation and interpreting the events of the Holocaust ideally serves as a method to identify and stop further crimes against humanity.
VINCENT GALASSO, studying the display case above, was the principal at Bronx High School of Science from 1964 to 1995. He gave teacher Stuart Elenko the green light to create the school’s unique Holocaust Museum.
AMONG A wIdE VArIETy of artifacts at the museum — including propaganda posters, uniforms and documents — are a striped hat worn by a concentration camp inmate and a pair of wooden-soled leather shoes.
What’s the takeaway? “The whole reason why we still teach about it is to have that relation where after teaching it, people have to have the takeaway, how can we prevent it from happening in the future?” said 17-year-old senior David Millstein. Others point to the responsibility held by those in power to act humanely and the need to vigilantly keep those powers in check. “During the Holocaust, many of the people who committed the highest atrocities were intellectuals and knew a lot,” said senior Rachel Hia, 17. “We’re Bronx Science. We’re the cream of the crop. We know a lot of information. It’s just what we take from it, what we do with that information, that’s really important.” Recently deceased social studies teacher Stuart Elenko started the museum’s collection in 1978 with the aid of the Northwest Bronx’s large Jewish population, which has donated items related to the Holocaust to Bronx Science.
Building empathy “I think Mr. Elenko’s goal was to help students become thinking and feeling human beings who are also empathetic to others,” said English teacher Sophia Sapozhnikov, who currently heads the museum. “I think he also wanted to train future leaders. To be a leader is to take a stand on a moral decision. And so that’s one of the goals that I’m hoping to continue.” Ms. Sapozhnikov said Mr. Elenko began housing objects collected from students’ families along with purchases he made at auctions of Nazi items in a small room at Bronx Science’s library. With the help of $1 million in donations from Bronx Science graduates, the school created the new galleries to permanently exhibit Mr. Elenko’s collection, which opened last April. Today, the collection includes roughly 1,000 items. Senior Sofie Somoroff, 17, said the experience of seeing and handling objects such as a letter signed by Adolf Hitler drove home the reality of the Holocaust even though it ended nearly 70 years ago.
All photos by Marisol díaz
‘THIS IS THE ENEMy,’ by Karl Koehler and Victor Ancona, was the winner of a war poster competition sponsored by printing press manufacturer r. Hoe & Co as the United States entered world war II in 1942. SONdErKOMMANdOS were a detail charged with burning corpses at concentration camps. A majority of the Sonderkommandos were Jewish, as the Star of david on the uniform above indicates. THE INSCrIpTION on this Soviet propaganda poster reads ‘red Army soldiers, save us!’ That 1939 letter, whose authenticity has been confirmed by experts, is in the first room of the museum, which is devoted to materials from Germany and other countries during the Nazi rise to power. Among Nazi propaganda posters and drawers containing original documents, there is a
singed piece of an ornate Torah that survived Kristallnacht in Rheydt, Germany in 1938.
Nazi military relics The second room displays restored concentration camp prisoner uniforms and Nazi military attire.
The last room includes currency from the Theresienstadt concentration camp donated by Bronx Science graduate and Nobel Prize winner Hugh David Politzer, whose parents fled the Nazis from the former Czechoslavakia. A set of English translations of Nuremberg trial testimony by
3750 HUDSON MANOR TERRACE
Wilhelm Keitel, the Nazi general who enabled atrocities in Eastern Europe, were donated by a Bronx Science graduate who survived the Holocaust and befriended the translator. The museum is currently only open to students, Bronx Science graduates and community organizations.
Assistant Principal for Social Studies David Colchamiro said Bronx Science officials want to open the museum to the public on Sundays, though no date is set. Bronx Science graduates and community groups can request tours via www.bxscimuseum. webs.com.
1 BR /1 BATH
4525 HENRY HUDSON PKWY
GoRGeous RenovATion
LARGe JunioR 4 / 1 BATH
$210K. WeB#8557683
W/DeeDeD PARKinG sPAce
LinDA soLoMon 718.878.1709
$292K. WeB#8587197
RoBin TRAGni 718.878.1708
Lee MosKoF 718.549.4116 exT. 215