SPEAKER TELLS ‘HUMAN STORIES’ BEHIND THE HOLOCAUST
Lois Goldrich

New Jersey Jewish Standard –
Jan 15 2010

Sara Losch, director of lifelong learning at Barnert Temple in Franklin
Lakes, recently wrote to congregants that "for years, I’ve heard from
adults that they don’t have a legitimate education about the Shoah."

"Many of us did not learn about it in school," she added. "Some of
us only know what we know from movies or novels."

To address this need, the synagogue’s Elsie and Howard Kahane
Holocaust Education Fund is sponsoring a three-part lecture series,
"Why they did what they did: Understanding the human behavior behind
the Holocaust," led by educator Sharon Halper.

The program, employing personal narratives to explore human behavior,
community dynamics, and social context, began on Jan. 13 and continues
on Jan. 20 and 27.

Halper — who teaches both children and adults and has been a synagogue
school director, teacher trainer, writer, and consultant — pointed
out that her lecture series derives from her studies with Facing
History and Ourselves, a group that "delivers classroom strategies,
resources, and lessons that inspire young people to take responsibility
for their world," according to its Website, Facing.org.

Sharon Halper

At the heart of its work is the resource book "Facing History and
Ourselves: Holocaust and Human Behavior," from which Halper has drawn
her series title.

A child of refugees and survivors, the educator said the topic of
the Shoah has always presented "both a particular challenge and a
particular desire to convey those aspects of the Holocaust that I
find compelling."

In her talks, which she said "are not linear history and are not
devoted just to the Holocaust," she will review with attendees what
the world was like "before, during, and since" the Shoah.

"It’s important to understand what early 20th-century Europe, and
the U.S., looked like," she said. "Why was Hitler elected? We need
to understand not just what it was like in the 1920s but in the 1890s.

Why was the turf right?"

It is also important to understand how the Jews lived, she said.

"We think of it only as a time of death. But what did it mean to live
and to resist?"

Halper pointed out that, in 21st-century terms, "resistance means
winning, walking away. What does that mean with respect to those
who perished?"

She said she finds it compelling to look at the documents and
artifacts that survived the Warsaw Ghetto, where they had "soup
kitchens, gardens, and handed out recipes saying what to do with
frozen cabbages."

"What did it mean to live?" she asked, noting that she will look at
"human stories."

Halper said she would begin her first session with a discussion of
the eugenics movement and the movement called Social Darwinism.

"Why was the language Hitler spoke not a foreign tongue, even in
America?" she asked, noting that the United States at the time
was concerned about immigration, "people who didn’t look and sound
like us."

She will move on to discuss issues such as the Armenian genocide,
World War I, and Versailles, tackling questions such as "What did
Hitler learn from the world around him?"

In addition, she will explore the motivation of rescuers, people who
risked their lives to save Jews from the Nazis.

In discussing the Warsaw Ghetto, she said, she will make use of the
archives of the Oneg Shabbos group of scholars and others, compiled
by a social scientist in the ghetto first as resource material and
later — when he realized that survival was not possible — as a
historical record.

Halper said three boxes, containing thousands of artifacts such as
diaries and letters but also things like Purim candy and children’s
school schedules, were buried around the ghetto. Two have been
unearthed.

The educator, who grew up in Queens, N.Y., and has written curricular
materials for the Union of Reform Judaism, said that her parents
came to the United States in the late 1930s from Berlin and Vienna,
and her stepfather from Russia.

"There are two kinds of families," she said of Holocaust survivors,
"those who spoke and those who were silent. My family was silent. You
knew you could not ask."

The Barnert lecture series is free and open to the
public. For further information, call (201) 848-1800 or e-mail
ncohen1847@barnerttemple.org.

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