THE JEWISH NEWS

THIS ISSUE 6(:)

SERVING DETROIT'S JEWISH COMMUNITY

OCTOBER 16, 1987 / 23 TISHREI 5748

Teachers Reviewing
Holocaust Curriculum

New materials are ready for Oakland County
and high school students throughout the U.S.

ALAN HITSKY

Associate Editor

What factors led to the Holocaust?
What is the guilt of the Church? How
are we responsible and what can we
do to prevent future genocides?
High school students in Oakland
County and throughout the United
States will begin debating these
40-year-old questions in a more-
informed way within the next few
months because of a locally-produced
Holocaust curriculum.
More than 60 Oakland County
teachers will get their first look at the
new curriculum on Tuesday at a day-
long training session at the Jewish
Community Center. Their day will in-
clude a tour of the adjacent Holocaust
Memorial Center.
The 18-lesson curriculum was
developed by Dr. Sidney M. Bolkosky
of University of Michigan-Dearborn,
Southfield-Lathrup High School
teacher Betty Rotberg Ellias, and Dr.
David Harris of the Oakland County
Intermediate School District. It is

sponsored by the Center for the Study
of the Child, a pseudonym for Sidney
Lutz of Lutz Associates in Farm-
ington Hills, which has provided sup-
port and staff time.
Detroit-area Holocaust survivors
play a prominent role in the lessons,
appearing in a 50-minute videotape
with eyewitness accounts and in some
cases supplying original film footage
of their families before the Holocaust.
"This curriculum talks about
perpetrators and bystanders," said
Peter Nagourney, project coordinator
at Lutz for the Center for the Study
of the Child. "We would rather do that
than assault students, parents and
teachers with pictures of piles of
bodies:'
To drive home the lessons of the
Holocaust, the new curriculum — Life
Unworthy of Life — uses the latest
teaching techniques. Teachers can
have the students participate in a
Nuremberg trial or in a Nazi rally,
keep track of their calorie consump-
tion for a day and compare it to the
amount of food people in the concen-

A page from "Life Unworthy of Life."

tration camps were given, and utilize
the survivor tapes and war correspon-
dent descriptions.
Although the curriculum has
eighteen 45-minute lessons, not every
teacher or school district will have the
time to use all 18. But Nagourney and
Bolkosky expect teachers minimally
to cover the five lessons that use por-
tions of the videotape. Those lessons
cover destruction of families and per-
sonal responsibility; "Toward the
Final Solution," Kristallnacht and
the ghettos as seen through the eyes
of specific victims; the Final Solution

and its perpetrators; "Planet
Auschwitz," which will enable the
students to understand the victims'
experiences in the camps and how the
camps operated.
The entire curriculum includes
the videotape, a 318-page teacher
manual, a 214-page student textbook,
unit exam, archival photographs,
maps, chronological tables, and sug-
gestions for discussions and addi-
tional activities.
"What comes out of it," says
Nagourney, "are the ethical and

Continued on Page 26

REACHING
OUT

Personal rewards
and understanding
are the outgrowth
of a communal
anniversary