Facing History Speakers Bring History to Life for New York Students
In October 2007 at The School for Democracy and Leadership in Brooklyn, Lily Margules stood up in front of a group of about 40 high school seniors and told them that when she was their age, she was sent to her first concentration camp. "It makes the students connect to the story more if they understand I was a happy, normal teenager just like them when this happened to me," she says. And she's right. The students, from teacher Jesse Horst's 12th grade History class, were captivated as she relayed her Holocaust experiences. When Lily was finished, they presented her with flowers that they had purchased with their own money and huddled around her to ask questions and take pictures with her.
Lily is just one of the incredibly courageous Holocaust survivors that make up the Facing History and Ourselves New York Speakers Bureau. Like other survivors in the Bureau, she believes it is her duty to share her story with students so that the horrors of the Holocaust will not be repeated ever again. Facing History makes that possible. This year, the organization was able to bring survivors to 46 classrooms throughout the New York City area. Survivors visit classrooms of Facing History teachers who are in the midst of teaching their students about the events leading up to the Holocaust. They look at the choices ordinary people made-or didn't make-that allowed this horrific chapter in history to occur.
A survivor often visits at the end of a unit which gives teachers a chance to really bring to life the same history that their students have been studying. One teacher at The Packer Collegiate Institute in Brooklyn commented that her visit from speaker Helen Dunn, "helped reinforce for students that history is more than events that happened to others in the past."
A visit from a survivor also encourages students to understand the impact of their own everyday choices and helps them realize their potential as active participants in creating history. After survivor Frances Irwin spoke to a class at Newcomers High School in Long Island City, one 10th grade student wrote, "I will follow your advice of denouncing injustice, of helping other people, of being human by speaking up for the life of others."
This year, teachers in the New York region had the opportunity to apply for a grant to receive class sets of the book Anton the Dove Fancier and Other Tales of the Holocaust and a visit from the author, Holocaust survivor Bernard Gotfryd. Bernard was a teenager in Poland when the Holocaust began. He survived six concentration camps and was also active in the Polish underground resistance. Later, after he emigrated to the United States, he was a staff photographer for Newsweek for more than three decades and took portraits of many of the most influential people of the time. Bernard spoke in eight schools in the New York City area where students had read his book. These students had the chance to hear from not only a witness to history, but also an award-winning writer.
Facing History's New York Region Speakers Bureau also began collaborating with the Hidden Child Foundation this year. Through this partnership with Facing History, the Hidden Child Foundation was able to place speakers in 13 additional classrooms outside of Facing History's network in the NY area and beyond. One speaker even traveled to the small town of Clarinda, Iowa, where he spoke to over 1000 students and community members about his experience as a child who was hidden during the Holocaust.
In anticipation of the coming school year, Facing History and Ourselves' New York Region is now working to expand its Speakers Bureau. In addition to the Holocaust survivors that currently speak in Facing History classrooms, New York staff members are reaching out to individuals and groups who lived through and survived other moments in history marked by extreme prejudice and hatred. Prospective speakers include survivors of the Rwandan and Darfur genocides, as well as individuals who were active in the American Civil Rights Movement. These speakers will serve as yet another medium for helping students connect history to the moral choices they make in their own lives today.
For more information on how you can bring a speaker into your classroom or to share your personal of having a survivor speak to your students, please contact Lisa Held. Please also let us know of any individuals who would be interested in being a part of the Facing History and Ourselves New York Speakers' Bureau.
