Students visited the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C. and saw artifacts of the time period. The highlight of the experience was the testimony shared with the class by Henry Greenbaum, a Survivor Volunteer at the museum. The group also visited several monuments, memorials, and Smithsonian museums which prompted a renewed appreciation of American freedoms.
In addition, students immersed themselves in a full-day program that deals with the causes and effects of the Holocaust at the Teen Symposium on the Holocaust coordinated by the Holocaust Education Resource Center and the Jewish Federation of North Eastern Pennsylvania. The symposium was cosponsored and hosted by Marywood University in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Participants met with survivors of the Holocaust and American GI’s who liberated Nazi concentration camps. The keynote speaker was Sonia Goldstein, a Holocaust survivor and Alan Moskin, a liberator and former Staff Sergeant in the 66th Infantry in General George Patton’s 3rd Army.
Both opportunities enriched the classroom experience and provided a new lens through which to view the future.