Published: November 07, 2009 11:24 pm         

Eight Valley teachers selected for Auschwitz trip

Trip sponsored by CANDLES

TERRE HAUTE — Generations ago in a land across oceans, millions were murdered for reasons now hard to imagine.

But as years creep forward, from a century past to this one present, survivors bear witness that remembrance is the only prevention for recurrence.

“The only way we can help prevent another Holocaust from happening is to teach about the Holocaust in a better way,” Eva Kor said Saturday afternoon inside the CANDLES Holocaust Museum.

A survivor of the infamous Auschwitz concentration camp, and most unwilling participant in the twin studies conducted there, Kor will take a group of 50 travelers to Poland for the 65th anniversary of its liberation Jan. 23 to 30, 2010. Among those going are eight area schoolteachers hoping to bring the human side of the story back to their classrooms.

Kor described the dangers she sees in modern society’s glamorization of superficial characteristics such as looks, popularity and victory at the expense of others, and said she challenges the teachers to bring the lessons of Auschwitz back to a diverse collection of students, in classes ranging from English to geography, neighborhoods rich and poor.

Katherine Utley, now in her 41st year as an educator, teaches English at Terre Haute North Vigo High School. She recounted her experience working with students at Gibault years ago, and in particular a boy who said he aspired to become a mass murderer. But after listening to a presentation offered there by Kor, Utley said even that boy was touched. And it’s that humanization of what violence can do that she said she hopes to bring back.

“I have always had a passion for the value of human life and the dignity of the human spirit,” she said, describing the importance of teaching students that the lives in question were those of human beings just like them, not just pictures in books.

Kiel Majewski, museum coordinator for CANDLES, said he’s looking forward to the trip. A 2006 graduate of Indiana State University, Majewski earned a degree in history while interning at the museum. His great-grandparents emigrated to America from Poland, and he said his will be the first trip back for the family.

“As you can see, Eva has no shortage of ideas,” he said, describing the power of a survivor’s story to connect students with the reality of events.

While there Saturday, the group lit 12 candles in memory of the Kristallnacht attacks which occurred in Germany on Nov. 9, 1938. Literally meaning “night of the broken glass,” the attacks are considered to be among the first wave of those perpetrated against the Jews by the Nazi regime.

Eleven of the candles were lit in memory of the 11 million killed during the Holocaust, and the 12th for those killed in the genocides since World War II, she said. Many groups suffered under the Nazis, she explained as participants read statements while lighting candles. Many Christians who stood up to the Nazis’ persecution of Jews, as well as a multitude of other group deemed unworthy of life, were killed, she said, adding the importance of remembering.

Brian Boyce can be reached at 812-231-4253 or brian.boyce@tribstar.com.