By Claire Mikowski, Former Jewish LearningWorks Staff & Jewish Family Educator, 2003–06

Not often in my career as a Jewish educator had my legacy called me to action, but when it did, I answered Hineni, here-I-am. That moment took place more than two decades ago.

In 2004, I was Midrasha Director of the Bureau of Jewish Education, now Jewish LearningWorks. I was in the right position, with the skills and motivation, when two mothers from Peninsula Havurah High approached me to pitch an idea. In Israel, they told me, high school seniors go to Poland to witness Holocaust history. They visit concentration camps, synagogues and cemeteries. These mothers wanted their children to have that opportunity as well. Our meeting took only twenty minutes, but it was long enough to hear the call of my ancestors. I am the child of two survivors of the Shoah and my drive to bear witness is deeply personal. Still I wondered where I would find time to create a new program and lift it off the ground. Then again, how could I say no when I saw the urgency of passing this important part of our identity to the next generation? There were still living survivors who could teach our students what they had lived through.

That was the beginning of “Shalhevet,” flame. It became a course of study about life in Eastern Europe before the Holocaust, followed by a week-long trip to Poland with a survivor and an Israeli educator, then a week in Israel to experience our people’s rebirth in the Land. Shalhevet taught the sacred mitzvah of zachor, remembrance, to approximately 180 students over nine years. Students heard survivor’s stories in first person. One year, Dr. Dora Sorell walked them through Auschwitz and showed them the bunk where she slept with five other girls. The stories she told will be permanently ingrained on our students’ souls. Perhaps they will tell friends, family and their own children one day, that they learned from someone who was there and survived. They learned that they too might someday have to face terrible circumstances, but if they have courage, strength and a strong will to live, there may be a chance to begin again.

Dr. Steven Sloan, son of a survivor, accompanied Dora that year. He summed up his Shalhevet experience, “If you don’t remind people, they will ignore or worse deny that these things happened. They don’t want to believe that mankind could be so cruel.”

This is why we continue to remember. Only then will our six million not be forgotten. They will know that we heard their silence and spoke for them. Eight decades later, the world still needs Holocaust education to teach that hatred leads to man’s inhumanity to man. Through eye witness stories and primary documents, we continue to learn that the Holocaust cannot be denied. Programs like Shalhevet passed the flame to the children who will be called to speak next for them and for us.