Well, the projects are in and the students had
success with this new and provocative venture.
After receiving responses from their European
contacts, which included appropriate research links, students were able to
proceed with their research projects. Students collected additional data
to supplement the information sent to them via email.
Furthermore, students selected appropriate pictures and decorative
elements to supplement and enhance their presentations. Please view the
finished product to see for yourself. Click on the link which will take
you to my middle school website. On the homepage you will find links to
the student's projects. Open them and learn about the Holocaust Memorials
around the world honoring those who perished during one of the World's darkest
periods.
Although only those who experienced this
darkness truly understand what it was. We will never be able to fully
comprehend it, but we can at least understand.
I would like to include some of Elie Wiesel's
words from his acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize on December
10, 1986.
I remember: it happened
yesterday, or eternities ago. A young Jewish boy discovered the Kingdom of
Night. I remember his bewilderment, I remember his anguish. It all happened so
fast. The ghetto. The deportation. The sealed cattle car. The fiery altar upon
which the history of our people and the future of mankind were meant to be
sacrificed.
I remember he asked his father:
"Can this be true? This is the twentieth century, not the Middle Ages. Who
would allow such crimes to be committed? How could the world remain
silent?"
And now the boy is turning to
me. "Tell me," he asks, "what have you done with my future, what
have you done with your life?" And I tell him that I have tried. That I
have tried to keep memory alive, that I have tried to fight those who would
forget. Because if we forget, we are guilty, we are accomplices.
And then I explain to him how
naïve we were, that the world did know and remained silent. And that is why I
swore never to be silent whenever wherever human beings endure suffering and
humiliation. We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the
victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we
must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in
jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men
and women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views,
that place must — at that moment — become the center of the universe. . .
Human suffering anywhere
concerns men and women everywhere.
I have nothing more to add. I will let the
memorial projects speak for themselves.
