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Gratz College to Hold Teach-In on
Holocaust Education
M SASHA ROGELBERG | STAFF WRITER
arty Tuzman, son of
Holocaust survivors Esther
and Arnold Tuzman,
thought about Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’
in the Wind” as he was leading a
Holocaust education presentation to a
group of sixth graders last month.

Th e students asked questions unrelent-
ingly, all of them insightful and intro-
spective. As Tuzman pondered how to
answer the questions, he was reminded
of the experience of listening to Dylan’s
song, eagerly awaiting the answers to the
existential questions posed in the verses.

In the case of Holocaust awareness and
education, some of the answers to the
complex questions remain unanswered:
“What do we do? How do we make peace
with this? How do we resolve to look
back at what happened?” Tuzman said.

Elisha Wiesel, son of Holocaust survivor and scholar Elie Wiesel, and Irwin
Cotler, founder of the Raoul Wallenberg Centre on Human Rights, will discuss
Holocaust education to kick off the 2022 Arnold and Esther Tuzman Memorial
Holocaust Teach-In.

On Nov. 6, the Arnold and Esther
Tuzman Memorial Holocaust Teach-In at
Gratz College, organized by its Center for
Holocaust Studies and Human Rights,
SUN, NOV 13
1:30 - 4:00 PM
JACK M. BARRACK
HEBREW ACADEMY,
272 S. BRYN MAWR AVE,
BRYN MAWR PA
will help to address these questions on
how to preserve and teach the legacy of
the Shoah to future generations.

Th e program, “Battling Indiff erence:
How We Teach the Holocaust,” will
take place from 1-6 p.m. both online
and in-person at Gratz’ Melrose Park
campus and will open with a dialogue
between Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel’s
son Elisha Wiesel and Raoul Wallenberg
Centre on Human Rights founder and
former Canadian Attorney General
Irwin Cotler. Anti-Defamation League
Philadelphia Director of Education
Randi Boyette will moderate the session.

“Our entire center is predicated
on sensitively negotiating tensions
between learning about and from the
Holocaust,” Gratz President Zev Eleff
said. “We strongly believe that the
Holocaust was a sacred moment in
world history, in Jewish history. At
the same time, we also believe that it
cannot always remain apart, that there
are values and there are lessons to be
drawn from our current moment.”
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From the Jewish Exponent archives
The Tuzman family at Gratz College for the 2018 Arnold and Esther Tuzman Memorial Holocaust Teach-In
In a political climate of hate, teaching
the Holocaust to the young generation is
increasingly important, Boyette believes.

“Th e Holocaust is a historical event, but
how it’s remembered can have an outsized
impact on the values and the behaviors of
those who are taught it well,” Boyette said.

“Taught well, I think students can learn
and internalize the knowledge about what
happens when people are indiff erent to the
suff ering of others.”
With fewer survivors alive to share
their stories and with increasing
competing priorities in a classroom’s
curriculum, she said, designing and
executing a thorough instruction on
the Holocaust is challenging.

Cotler, an international human
rights lawyer, believes that addressing
antisemitism does not exist in a vac-
uum, and that proper education works
to address the roots of hatred.

“Antisemitism itself did not die in
Auschwitz,” he said. “It remains the
bloodied canary in the mineshaft of global
evil today, and, as we’ve learned only too
painfully and too well, while it begins with
Jews, it doesn’t end with Jews.”
With most of his scholarship and
work carried out in Canada, Cotler said
that antisemitism — while it still per-
vades Canadian politics — is “incen-
tivized” in the U.S. by “fake news,”
political polarization and “campus cul-
ture, legal culture, entertainment cul-
ture, media culture and the like.”
Cotler is jarred by statistics that sug-
gest that only about 50% of people can
name a concentration or death camp,
indicating poor knowledge about the
Holocaust. However, he cited a statistic
that 80% of people want to learn more
about the genocide as promising.

Though New Jersey mandates
Holocaust education in elementary and
secondary schools, and Pennsylvania
“strongly encourages” the same, more
mandates are needed, Cotler said.

Th e interest in learning about the
Holocaust needs to be nurtured, he
said, harkening back to the event’s
theme of “Battling Indiff erence.”
“It reminds me of the important
lesson of my mentor, Professor Elie
Wiesel, which has been a life’s lesson
in my work: that indiff erence always
means coming down on the side of
the aggressor, never on the side of the
victim — on the side of the tormentor
and not on the side of the tormented.”
Following the conversation with
Wiesel and Cotler, there will be four
breakout sessions and the unveiling of
the digital archives of the Gratz College
Holocaust Oral Histories Project, the
second-oldest Holocaust testimonial
archive in the country.

Th e Tuzman family named and
endowed the Holocaust Teach-In in 2010
shortly aft er Esther Tuzman’s death in
2009. Arnold Tuzman was added to the
title upon his death in 2013.

Marty Tuzman and his daughter
Kira Foley-Tuzman grew up hearing
the stories of their family’s survival,
instilling in them the importance of
Holocaust education.

“You picture a little kid sitting on
her grandfather’s lap, and some grand-
fathers would be telling ‘Mary Had a
Little Lamb’ or something — a sweet
story,” Foley-Tuzman said. “And those
are not the stories that [he told].”
“My grandfather would always say
throughout his life: We’re one step
away from this happening again,” she
continued. “Never forget.”
For more information about the
event, visit gratz.edu/news-and-
events/event-ca lenda r/ holocaust-
teach-in-2022. JE
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