H eadlines
Holocaust Continued from Page 1
well, there were still large
percentages of respondents
who did not meet the criteria.

The organization reported
that 63% of all national survey
respondents did not know that
6 million Jews were murdered,
36% thought that “2 million or
fewer Jews” were killed during
the Holocaust and 48% of
national respondents could not
name one of 40,000 concentra-
tion camps and ghettos.

Along with Pennsylvania,
the states with the highest
scores were
Wisconsin, Minnesota, Massachusetts,
Maine, Kansas, Nebraska,
Idaho, Iowa and Montana.

The states with the lowest
scores were Alaska, Delaware,
Maryland, New York, Georgia,
Hawaii, Louisiana, Florida,
Mississippi, and Arkansas.

The survey has garnered
mixed reactions among educa-
tors. Some think the data reflects
real problems with Holocaust
awareness among youth, while
others find the methodology
limited and alarmist.

Gretchen Skidmore, director
of education initiatives at
the United States Holocaust
Memorial Museum, said the
study’s exposure of overall
14 OCTOBER 8, 2020
nationwide gaps in Holocaust
knowledge, as well as the amount
of disinformation young adults
are exposed to on social media,
is cause for concern.

“Also alarming is the high
percentage of respondents
saying they believe Jews were
responsible for the Holocaust,
or that the Holocaust is a myth
or exaggerated. And Holocaust
denial is a form of anti-Semi-
tism, which is on the rise and
dangerous,” she said. “As an
institution that works with
educators in all 50 states, it
is from our experience very
clear that for Holocaust educa-
tion to be successful, there are
certain conditions that are
really important, like ongoing
commitment from leaders,
local school districts and the
local community.”
Randi Boyette, senior
associate regional director of
education at Anti-Defamation
League Philadelphia, said she
was excited by the results of the
survey in Pennsylvania.

“When I look at this, when
I see that 80% of respondents
have definitely heard about the
Holocaust, that 89% see that
the Jewish people were victims,
but there’s so many others who
were able to name other victim
groups, that they had a lot of
core basic knowledge about the
Holocaust, when so many other
states — even states that are
mandated like Delaware, New
York and Florida — are among
the lowest, it actually made me
feel very good,” she said.

Boyette worked on the
advisory committee for Act
70, a bipartisan piece of legis-
lation passed in 2014 that
strongly recommended the
teaching of Holocaust educa-
tion in Pennsylvania schools
and provided resources for
teachers. She said Holocaust
educators were asked to
weigh in when the legisla-
tion was being crafted, which
played a big role in strength-
ening Pennsylvania students’
Holocaust knowledge.

“I do want to give a particular
shout out to Sally Flaherty, who
worked for the Department of
Education at the time,” Boyette
said. “She ran the Act 70 Advisory
Committee, and she was deeply
committed to Holocaust educa-
tion, and Holocaust, genocide,
human rights violation, educa-
tion in Pennsylvania, and very
purposeful in working with the
committee. The infrastructure
provided by the Department
of Education made a huge
difference.” That infrastructure included
statewide teacher trainings on
presenting content in age-ap-
propriate ways and connecting
the events of the Holocaust to
other civil rights topics.

Josey Fisher, director of
the Holocaust Oral History
Archive and instructor in
Holocaust and genocide studies
at Gratz College, was also on
the advisory committee for
Act 70. She said the legislation
focused on teacher prepared-
ness and support.

“You can have a state that
mandates Holocaust education
but does not offer preparation
or resources for teachers to
study and to explore and to
give them support so that when
they go into the classroom
they present the subject in the
most appropriate way,” Fisher
said. “Just because something’s
being mandated doesn’t mean
JEWISH EXPONENT
‘The Monument to Six Million Jewish Martyrs’ at the Horwitz-Wasserman
Holocaust Memorial Plaza
Photo by Sophie Panzer
it’s done well.”
Boyette gave examples of
Pennsylvania Holocaust educa-
tion initiatives that predated
Act 70, including Echoes &
Reflections, an educational
partnership among ADL, USC
Shoah Foundation and Yad
Vashem, and the ADL’s Bearing
Witness Program, a Holocaust
education initiative specif-
ically geared toward Catholic
schools. She also cited the
Jewish Community Relations
Council’s work connecting
students with survivors through
its annual Youth Symposium on
the Holocaust programs and its
Survivor Speaker Bureau.

Writing in The Forward,
Stephen Smith, executive
director chair of the USC
Shoah Foundation, criticized
the study for using a narrow
definition of Holocaust knowl-
edge, downplaying the efficacy
of Holocaust education and
inciting fear.

“The Claims Conference
survey defined ‘knowledge’
of the Holocaust as follows:
a person has ‘definitely heard
of the Holocaust’ (78% said
they had), can name at least
one concentration camp, death
camp and ghetto (52% could
name at least one), and knows
that 6 million Jews were killed
in the Holocaust (37% did),”
Smith wrote. “These are not
unreasonable things to expect
people to know. But it’s also a
high bar to clear in order to say
that someone has ‘knowledge’
of the Holocaust.

“The implication of this
survey is that people are
somewhat anti-Semitic because
they do not know facts about
the Holocaust, when in fact
they just may not know specific
details about history.”
Fisher said this was an
important point, and that
statistics may not always tell
the whole story.

“I am not involved in
statistical results. I want to
know what’s going on in the
classroom,” she said. “What
are students learning? What
should they be learning? How
can we help teachers?” l
spanzer@jewishexponent.com; 215-832-0729
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM



F TAY-SACHS
R F R E E E E
H eadlines
1918 Continued from Page 1
cemetery near Cobbs Creek in
the hopes of stopping a deadly
pandemic. Rosenberg and Jacobs were
part of a shvartse khasene, a
custom created to save the
Jewish people when all seemed
lost. On Oct. 20, 1918, influenza
was ravaging populations all
over the world, and the Jewish
immigrant community of
Philadelphia was no exception.

The ritual, known as a black
wedding or plague wedding in
English, was a desperate attempt
to bring down God’s mercy.

During a shvartse khasene,
have interpreted the rite as
a good deed designed to end
God’s divine wrath. Cholera
was a terrifying disease that
could kill people within hours,
and by fulfilling two mitzvot
— helping the poor and facil-
itating the creation of a Jewish
family — Eastern European
Jewish communities may have
hoped to end divine wrath.

Press samples from the time
period that describe the plague
weddings as raucous and
joyous affairs suggest another
reason for the celebration.

“It was a theory in the 19th
century that you could be more
susceptible to cholera if you
were afraid and if you were
against the physically and
mentally disabled may have
meant it was considered
permissible to use them as
spiritual scapegoats to carry
the burdens of the Jewish
community as a whole. There
is no evidence that the selected
couples were asked for consent
about participating in the ritual
and, even if they did agree,
they may have been pressured
by a sense of obligation from
having received charity.

W hen
t hese
Jew ish
immigrants arrived in the
United States during the late
19th and early 20th centu-
ries, they lived in tight-knit
communities that preserved
There was a popular understanding that you should try to ward off
the fear and anxiety that came with a pandemic in various ways. And so
I suggest that the cholera wedding might have been a way for ordinary
Jews to try to bring some joy to a very very bleak situation, which we
understand very well today from our own circumstances.”
NATAN MEIR
the Jewish community collec-
tively pays for the graveyard
wedding of a poor or disabled
couple who may not have the
resources to get married on
their own. The custom origi-
nated in Eastern Europe
and gained
popularity during 19th-century cholera
epidemics in Russia, Poland
and the Pale of Settlement. In
his new book “Stepchildren
of the Shtetl: The Destitute,
Disabled, and Mad of Jewish
Eastern Europe, 1800-1939,”
Natan Meir, Lorry I. Lokey
Professor of Judaic Studies
at Portland State University,
argues that the origins of the
shvartse khasene can be inter-
preted in a variety of ways.

“It’s a wonderful example
of a very rich religious ritual
that religious studies scholars
and anthropologists can look
at from many different angles
and keep discovering new
things,” he said.

Meir said some scholars
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM anxious,” Meir said. “And
therefore, there was a popular
understanding that you should
try to ward off the fear and
anxiety that came with a
pandemic in various ways. And
so I suggest that the cholera
wedding might have been a
way for ordinary Jews to try
to bring some joy to a very
very bleak situation, which we
understand very well today
from our own circumstances.”
Another more sinister
possibility, Meir argued, is
that the wedding served as a
symbolic sacrificial ritual.

“These disabled people,
these marginalized figures
within Jewish society in Eastern
Europe, were often perceived
as half-dead,” Meir said. “Of
course, they’re living people,
but there’s something about
them which was perceived as
very liminal, which is kind of
on the border between this
world and the other world.”
Widespread discrimination
the old traditions. Faced with
the deadly 1918 influenza
pandemic, which killed 12,000
Philadelphians in four weeks
and almost 700,000 Americans
in two years, they turned to
these customs for guidance.

“At the time of Harry and
Fanny’s wedding in the fall of
1918, the Spanish flu epidemic
was at its peak,” wrote Charlie
Hersh, administrative assistant
at Jewish Learning Venture and
a former education specialist
at the National Museum of
American Jewish History, in an
article for My Jewish Learning.

“Public gatherings were banned
while social groups, including
synagogue congregations,
donated time and supplies. In
an atmosphere of desperation,
a handful of Jewish couples
hoped this tradition from the
‘old country’ might make a
difference.” While the Cobbs Creek
plague wedding attracted huge
crowds, many American-born
JEWISH EXPONENT
Jews were horrified by the
superstitions the ceremony was
based upon. Shortly after the
wedding took place, the Jewish
Exponent ran an opinion piece
denouncing the event.

“The wedding held in a
Jewish cemetery last Sunday
for the purpose of staying the
ravages of the epidemic was
a most deplorable exhibition
of benighted superstition. We
are told that the custom origi-
nated in Russia. It and the
participants should have been
permitted to remain there.

Unfortunately the publicity
given to the occurrence will
convey to many people that
this is a custom sanctioned
and encouraged by the Jewish
religion. The people who do
such things do not know what
Judaism means,” an outraged
contributor wrote.

One month later, the paper
published a slightly more
flattering announcement about
another shvartse khasene that
took place in New York. The
ceremony was held in Mount
Hebron Cemetery and joined
Rose Schwartz and Abraham
Lachterman in matrimony.

“The tradition on which
the couple acted is one which
declares that the only way to stop
a plague is to hold a marriage
ceremony in a cemetery. When
& & TAY-SACHS
CANAVAN CANAVAN
SCREENING SCREENING
CALL (215) 887-0877
FOR DETAILS
e-mail: ntsad@aol.com;
visit: www.tay-sachs.org
■ Screening for other
Jewish Genetic Diseases
also available.

This message is sponsored by a friend of
Nat’l Tay-Sachs & Allied Diseases
Association of Delaware Valley
Miss Schwartz and Lachterman
consented to offer themselves
to stop the influenza epidemic,
the neighbors were so grateful
that they provided food,
taxicabs, a wedding gown and
even the furnishings for a flat.

Two thousand persons cheered
the courageous pair as they
started for the cemetery,” the
announcement read.

The influenza pandemic
eventually came to an end in
the spring of 1920. The couples
who volunteered to be wed in
Philadelphia and New York
were honored for their service
to their communities. l
spanzer@jewishexponent.com; 215-832-0729
*Rates are subject to change. Please review current annuity contract for more information. Insurance products are offered through nonbank
insurance agency affiliates of Wells Fargo & Company and are underwritten by unaffiliated insurance companies. Guarantees are based on the
claims-paying ability of the issuing insurance company. Fixed annuities may have a higher initial interest rate which is guaranteed for a limited
time period only. At the end of the guarantee period, the contract may renew at a lower rate. Annuities offered through Brighthouse Financial.

For purchase payments of $25,000-$99,999 3 year rate is 1.65%
Investment products and services are offered through Wells Fargo Advisors Financial Network, LLC (WFAFN), Member SIPC.

Samson Wealth Management Group is a separate entity from WFAFN.

OCTOBER 8, 2020
15