Studying the Holocaust

In Language Arts, students are completing  a unit on the Holocaust. After visiting the Holocaust Museum in Maitland last Friday, students completed one final assignment: to write a letter to a school board about why the Holocaust is an important lesson that should be studied in school. Here is a quote from one student’s letter…

“If the Holocaust wasn’t taught in the school setting, where else would children learn about this time and how to prevent it from happening? If we didn’t learn about the Holocaust in school, the people who died in the Holocaust would be gone forever along with their memories. We should want to try and keep these people’s lives and memories alive. For example, in The Nobel Acceptance Speech Delivered by Elie Wiesel, Wiesel includes how, ‘Our lives no longer belong to us alone; they belong to all those who need us desperately.’ The purpose of this excerpt is to inform us that we need to understand the importance of memories and how crucial they are in order to keep those that have passed during the Holocaust alive in our thoughts.”

– Sydney Wall