Holocaust educators take chilling journey through Europe’s darkest chapters

by Jill Huber
NJJN Bureau Chief/Monmouth

Dale Daniels and Jane Denny visited Europe this summer, but it was no pleasure trip.

Instead, the two took part in a chilling odyssey along the historical path that traced the evolution, development, and consequences of Nazism.

Daniels, executive director of the Center for Holocaust Studies at Brookdale Community College in Lincroft, and Denny, the center’s director of education, traveled to Germany and Poland on an educational trip with scholars from the Jewish Foundation for the Righteous.

Daniels, a Holmdel resident, and Denny, of Fair Haven, were part of the JFR’s 2006 European Summer Study Program, which included 12 middle and high school teachers and Holocaust center personnel from seven states.

The trip, which took place from July 10 to 23, was described by Dr. Robert Jan van Pelt, a Dutch author and the trip’s accompanying scholar, as a high-level, intensive educational experience that included visits to concentration camps, ghetto sites, and Holocaust memorials.

The genesis for the program was the realization that as more states have mandated the teaching of the Holocaust in their public schools, there was still a void in available resources, according to Stanlee Stahl, JFR executive vice president.

“By focusing our efforts on helping teachers and Holocaust center personnel enhance the classroom experience, it is our hope that children will be more responsive and moved by the lessons of this tragic period in world history,” Stahl said.

The JFR was created in 1986 to provide financial assistance to non-Jews who risked their lives to rescue Jews during the Holocaust; it also runs a Holocaust education program to preserve the legacy of the rescuers and teach the history of the Holocaust to educators.

Landing in Munich, trip participants toured former Nazi Party headquarters and then traveled to Nuremberg, where they toured Zeppelin Field, the site of massive Nazi Party rallies. The educators stood on the site where Hitler addressed the party faithful.

There were sobering visits to the concentration camps at Buchenwald and Sacksenhausen, as well as to the Jewish Memorial Museum in Berlin. They attended a Friday night service at Berlin’s Oranienberg Synagogue; although the front of the structure is in good condition, the rear still exhibits signs of war damage, Daniels said.

They also conversed with rescuers who had often endangered their own lives and the lives of their families to provide refuge to Jews.

“Many of these people were moved to action for strictly humanitarian reasons,” said Denny. “For them, it wasn’t a ‘Jewish’ issue; they were responding to people in need.”

And the scholars, historians, and laypersons the JFR group met throughout Germany were not reluctant to talk with them, she added.

“There was no denial on their part about what had happened all those years ago,” she said. “There was no overt anti-Semitism. Germany has become a modern, progressive country.”

But when the group arrived in Poland, their reception was quite different, said Denny. They were sometimes met with hostile glances, and many residents throughout the country were not eager to acknowledge their presence. The contrast with their reception in Germany was dramatic.

In the town of Tykocin, the townspeople were eager to avoid the visitors. But in Cracow, the group found a Jewish synagogue that still functions and learned that the city’s annual Jewish culture festival had taken place several weeks earlier.

They visited the city’s Jewish Historical Institute and went to Warsaw’s Jewish cemetery, which is adjacent to the site of the infamous Warsaw Ghetto. They also met with a group of Warsaw Jews who are trying to revive Jewish life in the area.

But the other side of Jewish life in Poland was soberly reflected in visits to Treblinka, located outside Warsaw; Majdanek, near Lublin; and the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex, located in the town of Ocwiecim.

“At one time, about 8,000 Jews lived in that town; that was about 60 percent of the town’s population,” Daniels said.

As the group toured Auschwitz and Birkenau, also known as Auschwitz II, the size and scope of the grounds was overwhelming.

“Auschwitz mainly served as a slave labor camp, while Birkenau was the death camp, the place of extermination. The sheer size of these places provided a strong insight into the intent of what went on there,” Denny said. “You could obtain a complete grasp of what these camps were and what they did.”

Although a sense of horror still prevails over the surroundings, the section where the selection process took place was the most disturbing, Daniels said.

“That part of the camp was the key to the destruction,” she said. “That’s where most of the life-and-death decisions were made for the Jews and all the others who were sent there. That was a historical site, in the very worst sense of the word, because you could see how the environment contributed to the historical outcome.”

Daniels and Denny have already begun to integrate their experiences into the offerings of BCC’s Holocaust center.

“This trip was the most worthwhile learning experience I’ve ever had,” Daniels said. “I’m more passionate than ever about exploring these subjects with people who visit the center, members of the general community, and with educators from schools throughout New Jersey. The things we saw and all that we learned will enable us to broaden our scope of teaching.”

The trip also underscored how much work remains in the area of Holocaust education, Denny added.

“Ingrained hatred is hard to fight, but that means we’ll just have to work harder,” she said. “It’s not easy to overcome hatred, especially when it’s ingrained in children, but we have to try. What we experienced in Germany and Poland makes us more motivated than ever to promote tolerance and understanding. You can’t be a passive bystander in the face of hatred or intolerance.”