On a cold December morning, a bus springs open like a Trojan horse, spilling forth effervescent eighth-graders from Morris County on an odyssey to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. As the students file through museum security, they paint a cross-section of America today, spanning races, religions, and national origins. On Dec. 17, however, assembled in the lobby, they stand united in purpose: to learn lessons from the Holocaust, an event of another continent an ocean away and three generations removed.

"Kids relate the injustices suffered by individual victims to being judged, stereotyped, and discriminated against themselves on the basis of race, religion, or class," said Shelley Bromberg, the language arts teacher at Mount Olive Middle School who orchestrated the trip. Bromberg teaches the Holocaust not as one story about the suffering of millions, but as millions of stories about the suffering of individuals: a mother, a child, a grandparent. In order to raise compassionate human beings, Bromberg said, she believes different channels need to be developed to touch their hearts at this important stage in their development. So this year, in addition to reading Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl, Bromberg's students will view such documentaries as Gerta Klein's Academy Award-winning One Survivor Remembers and research historical elements such as the Warsaw Ghetto through art, poetry, lyrics, and journal entries.

When, by chance, the teacher stumbled upon details of the Morris Rubell Holocaust Remembrance Journeys offered in association with United Jewish Communities of MetroWest New Jersey, she recognized immediately the benefits it would offer her students to spend a day on a guided tour of the Washington museum. "I especially liked that, on this trip, every moment would count," Bromberg said, referring to the bus the students rode on as a "traveling school room," on which they viewed a video of Morris Rubell, now deceased, describing his experiences as a child survivor of the ghetto in Krosno, Poland, and concentration camps, and his liberation and the aftermath.

The students would also hear firsthand accounts from Holocaust survivors Fred Heyman and Peter Fleishmann, accompanying them on the bus. "I realized that my students would be the last generation able to meet and interact with survivors, and saw the Rubell program literally as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for them," Bromberg said. So she contacted the nonprofit program, submitted an application to Rubell's son, Michael Rubell, director of the Morris Rubell Holocaust Foundation, and won an all-expenses-paid trip to Washington for a delegation from her school.

But the teacher then faced a dilemma: Which students would go? Rather than selecting randomly or limiting inclusion to her own classes, Bromberg challenged the entire eighth grade to vie for one of the 44 seats on the bus. To choose the participants, she held a Holocaust essay contest asking the students to explain what the trip would mean to them. The idea was that of principal Dr. Tracey Severns, who, like Bromberg, believes the best education goes far beyond the classroom walls. "We thought a school-wide competition was an open and fair way to select students with genuine interest, and earning the trip would make the experience more lasting for them," she said.

The challenge of the essay assignment struck a chord among students of all academic and socioeconomic stripes who, for three weeks, to earn passage to Washington researched and reflected on the shock and inspiration of the Holocaust. "One student told me," Bromberg said, "that if she and her friend hadn't been selected, her mom would have driven them down to the museum herself." In all, 70 13- and 14-year-olds submitted writings to Bromberg, many with profound reflections on social tolerance, and the best essayists were selected for the trip.

"The perception that only people of Jewish descent would be interested in learning about the Holocaust is incorrect," Severns said of the primarily non-Jewish students at Mount Olive Middle School. "Kids are idealistic at this formative age. Though the Holocaust was not their experience, it's the human experience the kids relate to in wanting to live in a better world."

Judging from the students' reactions to the museum, they are well-equipped to set a path to that better world. "I couldn't imagine going through what they did," student Nicole Perazzo said in a hushed voice after walking through the "Daniel's Story" exhibit at the museum . "It makes me feel sad, angry at the people who let this happen, and more aware."