BY CINDY KRANZ
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Teresa Poeppelman lights the menorah during a memorial service at Hebrew Union College.
(Steven M. Herppich photo)
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Come fall, when Michael Loudenslager and Teresa Poeppelman return to their classrooms, they'll make sure the lessons of the Holocaust remain as fresh as footprints in newly fallen snow.
For years, the two teachers devoured what Holocaust material they could find and worked to pass on that knowledge in their classrooms. Given the recent school shootings across the country, their Holocaust lesson plans take on a sense of urgency.
"I see hate on the rise," said Mr. Loudenslager, an Anderson High School government and history teacher. "That was the common ingredient in the Holocaust -- hate. Hating people for being people." Moved by their desire to teach students about the murder of 6 million Jews by the Nazis during World War II, Mr. Loudenslager and Mrs. Poeppelman, a humanities teacher at the D. Russel Lee Career Center in Hamilton, were among 30 teachers who took "Teaching the Holocaust," an eight-week workshop at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion earlier this year.
The course culminated last week in a trip to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.
The Holocaust by definition
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The Holocaust (meaning a period of widespread destruction), refers to the mass murder of European Jews by the Nazis during World War II. The Nazi persecution of the Jews began in 1933 after Adolf Hitler came to power, and continued until the war ended in 1945. Eleven million people died during the Holocaust, including more than 6 million Jews. Other victims included gypsies, homosexuals, people with disabilities and Jehovah's Witnesses.
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By bringing home the lessons of the Holocaust to their schools, the teachers hope to stem the tide of intolerance and disrespect for life they see resurfacing more than 50 years later. subhed:Back to school body:
Beginning March 23, the teachers attended class every Monday night for eight weeks. In each class, a different aspect of the Holocaust was discussed:
Holocaust overview, Jews and Judaism, anti-semitism, ghettos, concentration camps, rescuers and bystanders, an evening with survivors and ramifications for Christians and Jews.
Ann Mann Millin, an HUC doctoral student and Judaic studies teacher at the University of Kentucky, and Fran Harmon, a professor at the College of Mount St. Joseph, taught the classes.
"Teachers are, first and foremost, people who shape the future," Ms. Millin said. "In order to do that, you have to make people aware of the past and the significance of the past.
"Hitler's massive exercise in racism was fed by one of the oldest hatreds know to humans -- anti-semitism. By studying this one hatred, we can come to understand the fundamentals of how racism works. It destroys victims and ultimately destroys perpetrators. It's a force we must absolutely face and eradicate." subhed:Michael Loudenslager
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Mr. Loudenslager, 48, has taught for 24 years, 15 of them at Anderson High School.
He attended Ohio State University, where he learned scant Holocaust information, even as a history major. His Jewish college friends taught him the most about the Holocaust.
Teaching oppotunities
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Loudenslager and Poeppelman visited the United States Memorial Holocaust museum in Washington.
(Gannett photo)
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"Teaching the Holocaust" is an eight-week workshop designed to assist teachers in public, private and religious settings who are incorporating the Holocaust into their school curricula.The spring workshop (dates to be determined) costs $75 and includes an expense-paid trip to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., in June 1999. Class capacity is 30. There's a waiting list for the course.
For information, call Gail Mermelstein at 221-1875, Ext. 228. |
His interest in the Holocaust escalated in 1994 when he took a group of students to Washington, where their stops included the Holocaust museum.
Accumulating free material available to teachers at the museum, Mr. Loudenslager began studying the subject. Three years ago, he started teaching a three-week Holocaust unit in his history class taught to juniors and seniors.
Along with the Holocaust, he's learned more about anti-semitism and Hitler's rise to power.
"His propaganda technique to go after the children through (anti-semitic) textbooks was the smartest thing anybody can do if you're looking to control the world," he said of Hitler. "He was a genius. He just channeled it the wrong way."
In the eight-week Holocaust class, he absorbed everything he could about Europe's Jewish ghettos during the 1930s and '40s, because there's little information on them, compared with concentration camps. He learned more Jewish history, a subject about which he knew little.
"History repeats itself," Mr. Loudenslager said. "If we don't learn it, we're going to allow it to repeat itself." subhed:Teresa Poeppelman body:
Mrs. Poeppelman, 45, has been a teacher 23 years, 22 of them at the D. Russel Lee Career Center, part of the Butler County Joint Vocational School District.
Her interest in the Holocaust was sealed about 20 years ago when survivor Werner Coppel of Kennedy Heights talked to her classes. "I almost tear up thinking about it," she said. "Once you listen to somebody who's been through that, you can't stop thinking about it. You have to pursue it."
Mrs. Poeppelman always taught the Holocaust in conjunction with World War II, dictatorships and what can happen when people are not in control of their government.
"I think it can happen again," she said. "I see a tremendous amount of prejudice in Butler County. I think there's a tremendous lack of knowledge and that's what brews prejudice.
"In this area, (the prejudice) is not directed toward Jews, but African Americans. The students need to see the extent (to which) prejudice can take them."
The Holocaust course has afforded her more resources for teaching tolerance and helped her refine her approach to teaching the subject. "I make sure students look at the people, the normalcy of the people's lives and then see how they were destroyed. I don't like to concentrate on gore and the bodies, but sometimes that's what it takes. " subhed:Memorial service body:
The class that will remain forever etched in their minds occurred April 27. Before that class, they attended a service at Skirball Museum on the HUC campus in Clifton in commemoration of Holocaust Remembrance Day (Yom HaShoah).
As Sylvia Samis, a violinist with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, played mournful music, Mrs. Poeppelman lit a candle in memory of those who died. Mr. Loudenslager read a poem.
Actress Rhonda Robbins from Los Angeles portrayed a woman whose 4-year-old daughter was snatched by the Nazis during the Holocaust, never to be seen again. The gut-wrenching performance left the teachers choked up.
Ms. Millin presented a graphic account of the atrocities of the concentration camps.
Michael loudenslager gives a reading during the Holocaust memorial service.
(Steven M. Herppich photo)
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"Don't hit your students with the detail I do. "Be selective," she told the teachers.
Gas chamber victims suffocated when their lungs burst and bled. "People climbed on top of each other to gasp the last breath of air near the ceiling," Ms. Millin said.
"The bodies were blue and covered with sweat, urine, feces, menstrual blood and miscarriages. The bodies were so entangled, they had to be removed with axes. Then, their gold teeth were removed and the bodies were burned in open pits or crematoriums."
When class was over, a grim-faced Mrs. Poeppelman shook her head. "I had sort of put this out of my mind," she said. "It's depressing." Another memorable night was May 11, when Holocaust survivors from the Tristate shared their stories with the teachers. Each survivor was assigned to speak to a small group of teachers to create a more personal, informal setting.
After the sessions, the survivors and teachers congregated, with one teacher from each group summarizing their survivor's story. Some teachers choked back tears as they tried to recount the survivors' stories.
After class, Mr. Loudenslager expressed admiration for the survivors. "We know we're going home and going to get in bed with our spouses and feel secure. There was a time when they didn't have that feeling."
They risked reopening old wounds and more sleepless nights, he said, by sharing their stories with the teachers. "They realize that's a possibility, and still they come and share with us." subhed:The museum body:
Standing in the vast Hall of Witness at the Holocaust Memorial Museum, Mr. Loudenslager asked Mrs. Poeppelman if she'd been there before.
It was her first visit, his fifth.
"You're going to love it," he assured her.
"I brought a batch of Kleenex," she said.
That, he said, was a wise decision.
The sobering experience began in a dimly lit elevator, designed to look like the interior of a gas wagon, the precursor to gas chambers. A monitor played a short clip of a man describing what he saw when he helped to liberate a camp. "You can't imagine it," the man said. "Things like that don't happen."
The elevator opened, revealing evidence that things like that do, indeed, happen. A huge photograph hangs on the wall, showing charred remains found at the Ohrdruff concentration camp after it was liberated in 1945.
"Notice the facial expressions on these people," Mr. Loudenslager said, pointing to bodies whose faces were frozen in pain. "They were the ones that were probably tortured."
He shook his head and walked away.
Mr. Loudenslager spent much of his time in the special exhibit, "Hidden History of the Kovno Ghetto," (in Lithuania), in his quest to learn more about ghettos.
"We would tear them down in the United States, but they were forced to live there for awhile," he said.
As he left the museum, Mr. Loudenslager reflected on his visit. "One thing about this museum," he said, "you can really feel the presence of the victims."
Meanwhile, Mrs. Poeppelman meticulously read every word on each display on the first floor, which concentrated on the "Nazi Assault" from 1933 to 1939.
She was troubled most by the "Science of Race" exhibit. It showed how Germans used swatches of hair color, a palette of eye colors and measured facial features to determine whether individuals were "Aryan" or "alien."
The reality hit home when she overheard two women next to her viewing the display. If those standards were applied to them, they said, they wouldn't be alive today.
Mrs. Poeppelman watched a video of medical experiments, an exhibit that carries a viewer discretion warning because it's so graphic. Her eyes welled with tears, and she shook her head, unable to speak.
"It was pretty overwhelming, seeing all that at once," she said of the museum.
And the emotions she felt?
"Disgust and dismay with what people can do to other humans. I was very saddened that a large segment of our population allowed that to happen. I continue to question, "What would I have done?' " It's a question that has no true answer. But what matters is that Teresa Poeppelman and Michael Loudenslager, and other teachers like them, care enough to do something now.
