AUGUST 25 • 2022 | 21

was like to endure a hot day. I was not prepared
to have those (testimonies) coming back at me. It
was very overwhelming.
”
In Warsaw, the group toured the Nożyk
Synagogue — the only pre-war synagogue in the
city to survive the war — which was used as a
stable by the Nazis.
“
As we toured this synagogue and touched the
very bricks where Jews lived and prayed for hun-
dreds of years, I thought about the Jewish families
and the generations that should have come after
them that were lost,
” Sepetys said. “I felt this
sense of obligation to make students understand
that these cities were such important centers of
Jewish life, that there was all this life before the
Holocaust.
”
Sepetys said the painstaking efforts to preserve
artifacts in Auschwitz contrasted with what little
remains of the original footprint of the Warsaw
ghetto. Remnants of the ghetto’s walls meld into
apartment buildings where today’s residents of
Warsaw now live out their lives.
“The residents of these apartments know they
are living in the footprint of the Warsaw ghetto
because visitors like us frequently walk by on
tours,
” Sepetys said. “But that’s how people live
there now. I looked down at my feet and there
were sewer grates, where Jews hid below from the
Nazis. Now people just walk past them without
giving it much thought. There were no signs or
any markers explaining that this was the place
where Jews hid.
”
Sepetys received educational tools to supple-
ment her teaching, but she hopes her own photos
and vivid memories will inspire her students to
engage with the material and not forget.

EDUCATING THE NEXT GENERATION
In 2020, the Conference on Jewish Material
Claims Against Germany released an unprece-
dented 50-state survey about Holocaust knowl-
edge among Millennials and Gen Z, revealing that
63% of respondents had no knowledge that 6 mil-
lion Jews were murdered during WWII. Thirty-
six percent thought the number of Jews murdered
was “2 million or fewer,
” and 48 percent could not
name a concentration camp.

Beginning in the 2016-2017 academic year,
Michigan mandated that public school students
beginning in the eighth grade in their social
studies curriculum should receive grade-appro-
priate instruction about genocide, including the
Holocaust and the Armenian Genocide. The
legislature recommends a combined total of six
hours of this instruction during grades 8-12.
Sepetys surveys her students at the beginning
of each semester to see how familiar they are with
the Holocaust. While many claim to know a great
deal about the subject, she advises them there is
always something new to learn.
“I begin each semester by telling my students
how long I have been teaching and reading about
the Holocaust, and I’m only beginning to scratch
the surface. I tell them that every survivor tes-
timony is unique. Every survivor has their own
story to share and each one is important.
”
To Sepetys, it is vital for her students to under-
stand not only the atrocities that happened in the
ghettos and the concentration camps, but also
the centuries of Jewish culture and life the Nazis
destroyed in a very short amount of time.
As she approaches the new school year, Sepetys
wants to impress upon her students that the
Holocaust only ended in the concentration camps
but began years before with carefully planned
propaganda and scapegoating against the Jews.
“Most of my kids have heard of the Holocaust,
”
Sepetys said. “What surprises them most is the
history of antisemitism in Europe, the amount
of propaganda and how much effort went into
scapegoating the Jews to a point that genocide
was committed against them. It’s important for
them to have that backstory.
”

West Bloomfield High
teacher tours Poland as an
Auschwitz Legacy Fellow.

Jennifer Sepetys in a court-
yard filled with arches where
a scene from the movie
Schindler's List was filmed

Remnant of the
Warsaw Gehtto
wall at 62
Zlota Street

The white button
in the rubble that
moved Jennifer
Sepetys to tears.

The Nozyk
Synagogue
in Warsaw