On Thursday, April 11, the eighth graders traveled to the Zekelman Holocaust Museum in Farmington Hills. These students had the opportunity to listen to the daughter of a Holocaust survivor as she spoke of her experiences growing up with a father who experienced life in a concentration camp in Poland. She gave the students a glimpse into the ways in which life after liberation was difficult for survivors, and how the trauma experienced by these survivors played a role in the upbringing of their children. She stressed the importance of understanding our role as citizens; that we need to be upstanders who are willing to combat hate when and where we see it so as to prevent hatred from continuing to spread.
As students explored the newly renovated museum on a docent-led tour, they had the opportunity to learn more about political events leading up the Holocaust, acts of resistance among those who were detained in the camps, and how to spot – and stop – the spread of antisemitism. This trip was a wonderful way for students to make cross-curricular connections between their reading of Corrie ten Boom’s The Hiding Place in literature and their learning of World War II in U. S. History.
