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

