Students Learn Stories of Resistance and Hope in Holocaust

Pam Plahs, VA Beta Upsilon, hopes to honor those who risked everything to resist the injustice of the Holocaust. Exploring the courageous decisions made by the group, Righteous Among the Nations, Plahs plans to lead her seventh graders to a deeper understand-ing of the Holocaust.

Righteous Among the Nations is defined as non-Jews who helped the Jewish people in times of need. They were Chris-tians, Muslims and atheists. Some were high-ranking diplo-mats who used their positions to secure false papers for Jews, while others were peasant farmers who hid Jews on their property.

Plahs recently received an R.E.B. Award (Rudolph and Esther Bunzi) for Teaching Excellence from the Community Foundation. She said, “I find the Holocaust to be one of the most tragic events within the history of the world. In the midst of that tragedy, however, stories of resistance and hope prevail and remind us of those who chose not to stand by and allow their fellow human beings to be persecuted and murdered, but rather had the courage, each in his or her own way, to help.”?

For several years Plahs has invited Holocaust survivor Jay Ipson to share his story of the poor Polish Catholic farmer who saved his 10-member family from the Nazis by hiding them in a potato hole on his farm. “Why?” students asked. Mr. Paskauska simply knew it was the right thing to do.?

?Plahs wants her students to grasp the consequences of apathy as well as the positive impact one individual can have. She hopes to empower her students to stand up against injustice. She plans to travel to Europe to visit former sites of ghettos and con-centration camps, Holocaust museums, synagogue archives and locations used to hide Holocaust refugees. She is also learning to play the violin to join her school’s orchestra as they play authentic concentration camp sheet music for the cross-curricular documentary project she will implement with her students.?