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