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UN Holocaust Programme Holds Professional Development Workshop for Educators in New York

17.05.2013

Several members of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance presented effective methods and new tools for teaching the Holocaust at a day-long workshop for nearly 100 educators, organized by the Holocaust and United Nations Outreach Programme on 2 May 2013 at United Nations Headquarters in New York. 

The workshop was opened by Mr. Peter Launksy-Tieffenthal, Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information, who underscored the importance of Holocaust education and the vital role that teachers play in shaping the attitudes of young people.

“Study of the Holocaust will help students to reflect on the consequences of hatred and discrimination, examine incidents that occur in their daily lives and place them in a broader context so that they can better understand the roots of racial and ethnic conflict” he said.

Ahmad Alhendawi, the newly appointed and first-ever Envoy of the Secretary-General on Youth, also spoke about how the lessons of the Holocaust, linking it to the goals of the United Nations and its objectives in promoting peace and security, development and human rights.

“I believe, the Holocaust presents a unique opportunity to teach young people about tolerance and the dangers of hate”, Mr. Alhendawi told participants. “It’s a lesson in the value of each human being and the need to protect human rights for all.”

Kimberly Mann, the Manager of the Holocaust and the United Nations Outreach Programme, moderated the day’s discussions and gave participants an update on the work of the Holocaust Programme. “Through our global network of United Nations information centres, this past January we implemented more than 130 Holocaust remembrance activities and projects in some 41 countries”, she said.

The workshop at the United Nations was comprised of five sessions that included presentations by the USC Shoah FoundationThe Institute for Visual History and Education , the Anne Frank House, Yad Vashem, The Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the Anti-Defamation League.

The first of five interactive sessions was be led by Stephen Feinberg, an educator with the USC Shoah Foundation, who introduced teachers to “IWitness,” an educational website that brings more than 1,300 testimonies of survivors and witnesses of the Holocaust and other genocides from the Institute’s Visual History Archive to secondary schools via engaging multimedia learning activities.

“IWitness provides a transformative educational experience of using testimonies of people who lived through the Holocaust”, Mr. Feinberg explained. “It is transformative because students make personal connections with the voices in IWitness.”

Also in the morning session, Karen Polak, a senior educator in the International Department of the Anne Frank House in The Netherlands, led a session titled “The Process of Exclusion and Persecution of Roma and Sinti in Past and Present”. Participants viewed two new websites on the Roma and Sinti experience and learned how this group was targeted for discrimination and murder by the Nazis and continue to be marginalized in some parts of the world today.

In the afternoon session, Sheryl Silver Ochayon, an educator and lawyer, guided educators on teaching the Holocaust and other genocides through curriculum created by the International School for Holocaust Studies at Yad Vashem, The Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority. She explained how the Holocaust can be used to teach about common patterns and processes in the development of genocidal behaviour.

Steven Luckert, Curator of the Permanent Exhibition at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, then gave a presentation on the power of propaganda. “Propaganda is an age-old phenomenon that plays on the emotions of hope and fear”, he explained. “It is something the Nazis understood”. 

Tanya Odom, an educator with the Anti-Defamation League, concluded the day’s discussions with a lively and interactive session on how teachers can create an anti-bias learning environment. She demonstrated how teachers could use “The Pyramid of Hate”, which starts with prejudiced attitudes and progresses to acts of prejudice, discrimination, violence and finally genocide.

The Holocaust Programme also provided the educators with its resource materials and newest educational product, the Discussion Papers Journal Volume II.  This publication is comprised of position papers drafted by Holocaust educators, genocide scholars and others around the world.  The articles are also available online at www.un.org/holocaustremembrance.org.