Holocaust Museum Has Strong Message

Julie Scott stood at the center of Auschwitz last summer - “the place where they made the selections, right or left,” she says, flipping her hand.

Scott came home from travels in Poland and Israel fired with a dream. She wanted her East Valley Middle School students to learn more deeply about the Holocaust.

Scott’s passion resulted in the Holocaust Museum, created during the past month by more than 100 eighth-graders.

Noisy teenagers enter the museum, set up on Monday in the school library.

Their chatter doesn’t last. For some, especially the younger students, this is their introduction to the Holocaust.

Exhibits range from life before Hitler to the Nazi death camps in World War II, from exhibits on the Einsatzgruppen, or mobile killing squads, to gentiles who rescued hundreds of Jews. Music from the resistance fighters plays in the background.

Sixth-graders Tiffany Vaudrey and Meagan Nuchols move through the exhibits together. Meagan points a crimson-tipped finger now and again to the photos. Some of the images are graphic - emaciated bodies, mass graves. Tiffany raises her hand to her face, as if to shield herself from what she sees.

“That’s gross. That’s so sad,” Tiffany says.

“It’s just so hard to believe that it happened,” Meagan says.

Chad Austen’s exhibit on righteous gentiles includes flags of the Allied nations and thumbnail biographies about such figures as Raoul Wallenburg. Attention to detail draws praise from visiting teachers.

“This is really exceptional,” Scott says.

David Leeson explains how he painted a dozen or so tiles with the insignia used at some of the death camps. A red triangle, for instance, encloses a black T stands for Tschechoslovakei - that patch was worn by Czech inmates.

A student wearing a Raiders’ jacket thoughtfully studies an exhibit on children of the Holocaust. Another boy, Adam Hergert, approaches Scott to say what a good job she and the students have done. Librarian Linda Carper shakes her head, amazed that some seventh-graders don’t even recognize photographs of Hitler.

“They haven’t been taught,” she says.

Well-known stories, such as Anne Frank’s, are represented here. So are lesser known heros, such as Janus Korczak, a doctor and author who headed an orphanage in Warsaw. Korczak stayed with the orphans right to the death, although the Nazis offered him his life.

Scott made sure her students kept a journal as they studied, so they could write out their emotions. Still, some had nightmares.

“I had nightmares, too, especially when I was in Israel,” says Scott, 38.

She found that writing unburdened her. Some nights in Israel, Scott wrote poetry until 1 a.m. “And I’m not a poet,” she says. “It was a life-altering experience.”

Every single student turned in a project, even those who often find it difficult to complete such a task, she says. Four classes took part, two taught by Scott and two taught by Loriann Howe.

Why is it important for these teens to know about Hitler and his 11 million victims?

“So they can be contemporary witnesses,” Scott says, and so they understand the importance of tolerance, acceptance, and not being a bystander before injustice.

“They all did a good job,” she says. “These are all museum-quality, exhibit-quality.”

Cheerleaders make it home

The University High School cheerleaders returned from national competition earlier this week, having won a superior rating - and some school-of-hard-knocks traveling experience.

On the way home, the 20-member team was delayed in Orlando, Fla., where the competition was held. Then the group found itself stranded overnight - without luggage - in Chicago, thanks to fog and airline labor problems.

The team was due in Monday night, and actually arrived Tuesday evening.

Home schooling conference

Valley Home Scholars, a homeschool group representing 300 families, is holding a conference touching on several topics, ranging from high school options for homeschoolers, to educational games. The conference will run from 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. at Berean Bible Church, 10910 E. Boone.

Horizon’s geography winner

Michael Lee Pentico, a seventh-grader at Horizon Junior High School, won his school’s geography bee, sponsored by the National Geographic Society.

The field started with 14 students. By the end of the evening on Jan. 13, Pentico and runnerup Colin Fulton, an eighth-grader, had survived six rounds of questions.

Finally, Pentico triumphed on this question: What two states border Lake Tahoe? The correct answer is California and Nevada.