Looking Back

From the William Davidson Digital Archive of Jewish Detroit History 

accessible at www.djnfoundation.org

“Never Forget”
Y

om HaShoah or “Holocaust 
Remembrance Day” is April 28. 
In this respect, some interesting 
Holocaust-related stories have recently 
been published in the national press and 
the JN.
Some of the stories were about good 
news. On March 16, the JN published the 
story of 14-year-old Girl Scout Emma 
Beach, who won an award 
for her project on the 
Holocaust. Its focus was 
“Stop the Hate” through 
education. Famed docu-
mentary filmmaker Ken 
Burns announced that 
his next project would be 
The U.S. and the Holocaust, 
which will air on PBS this fall. Burns 
declared the film to be “one of the most 
important we’ve ever worked on.
” It was 
also announced that a new Holocaust 
Museum will be established in Boston 
and that Canada is on the verge of out-
lawing Holocaust denial.
Some reports were not so good. In 
January, the Holocaust graphic novel, 
Maus, was in the news when a Tennessee 
school board decided to ban the book 
because board members felt the book’s 
story and images were too traumatic 
for young readers. This month, Gabriel 
Ascoli, a junior in a Virginia high school, 
wrote an op-ed in the LA Times lamenting 
the fact that she and her classmates learn 
very little about the Holocaust. Indeed, 
recent studies indicate that a large per-
centage of Americans do not know fun-
damental Holocaust history. And many 
reports note the recent rise in antisemi-
tism and extremists who deny the Shoah.
I decided to explore the topic of 
Holocaust education in the William 
Davidson Digital Archive of Jewish 
Detroit History. This was an encouraging 
endeavor. 
Early stories about the topic in the JN 
appear in 1978. Editor and Publisher 

Philip Slomovitz devoted most of his 
“Purely Commentary” column for Jan. 
6, 1978, to our “Duty to Never End 
Exposing Nazis Crime … Teaching the 
Holocaust.
” A year earlier, the headline 
for the Oct. 14, 1977, issue was about 
Holocaust education. New York schools 
were attacked by German- and Arab-
American protesters when the system 
introduced Holocaust studies into the 
curriculum.
Holocaust education, however, is alive 
and thriving in Michigan. In June 2016, 
then-Gov. Rick Snyder signed legislation 
that was sponsored by State Rep. Klint 
Kesto. It mandated Holocaust and geno-
cide education in all Michigan schools 
and created a Governor’s Council on 
Genocide and Holocaust Education (Oct. 
27, 2016, JN). This was after 20 years of 
the Holocaust Education Coalition pro-
viding lessons and speakers for Holocaust 
education (April 1, 1994).
Of course, The Zekelman Holocaust 
Center in Farmington Hills is the pri-
mary lodestone for Shoah education in 
the state and region. The HC has offered 
exhibits and Holocaust programming 
since 1984 when it was established as the 
first freestanding institution in the United 
States devoted to Holocaust history and 
memory.
The Detroit Jewish News Foundation 
has also contributed, creating two exhib-
its from the Davidson Archive — “The 
Holocaust Unfolds” and “
Aftermath” 
— that focused upon the Holocaust and 
its impacts. These exhibits were first dis-
played at the HC in 2018 and 2019.
I’ll end with a quote from the May 19, 
1978, JN editorial: “If the Holocaust is to 
be remembered, never to be erased from 
memory, it must be a part of every repu-
table textbook.
” 

Want to learn more? Go to the DJN 
Foundation archives, available for free 
at www.djnfoundation.org.

Mike Smith
Alene and 
Graham Landau 
Archivist Chair

62 | APRIL 28 • 2022 

