How do schools in the Five Towns teach the Holocaust? Find out here

New York is one of 23 states in which schools are required to teach students about the Holocaust. Jack Britvan, president of Voices for Truth and Humanity, says the subject should be a requirement for graduating from high school.

Britvan, who grew up Mill Basin, Brooklyn, spent his summers working behind the counter at his famiy-owned Woodro Kosher Delicatessen and Restaurant on Broadway in Hewlett. He knows the Five Towns pretty well, he said, and he knows the concerns many residents have about increasing incidents of hate speech and other crimes against Jews.

In 2019, Britvan, a real estate broker, founded Voices for Truth and Humanity, a nonprofit that promotes education in public schools about World War II, the Holocaust and other genocides.

Last year, Gov. Kathy Hochul signed a law requiring survey instruction on the Holocaust in the state’s public school districts. Superintendents were required to attest that their districts were including the subject in their classroom instruction. According to the state Education Department website, 99 percent of school districts are doing so.

But Britvan maintains that they aren’t teaching it the way it should be taught.

“The vast mass majority of the schools are not teaching appropriately about the Holocaust,” he said. “We’re looking to change the word ‘mandate’ to ‘requirement.’”

In July 2020, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis signed a law that required students to learn about the Holocaust before graduating from high school. The Colorado State Board of Education recently finalized standards to implement the curriculum in every district.

“You have to teach about the Holocaust in a particular curriculum,” Britvan explained. “You don’t have to go in-depth to the point that you understand every single aspect, but the basics of how it came to be, what it was, what happened during and after.

“All these things are necessary,” he continued, “and when you don’t have that, you get lies from all over the place — from the Internet, college professors and schoolteachers. What happens is, you learn the wrong thing, and the hate comes out.”

Responses to Hochul’s survey were made available to the Herald by Hewlett-Woodmere school district officials. Among the questions was one focusing on how educators were instructed to teach about the Holocaust.

“Our staff has been trained in Holocaust Education by the staff at the Holocaust Memorial and Tolerance Center in Glen Cove last year,” the district response stated. “We have also had a trainer work with the Social Studies Department at our school.

“We also have visited Suffolk Community College,” the district continued “where the professors enlightened us about the eugenics movement in Cold Spring Harbor as well as the activities at Camp Siegfried in Suffolk County sponsored by the American Nazi Bund prior to World War Two.”

The district begins Holocaust instruction at the elementary level, exploring the origin of the swastika in ancient India, and how the Nazi party misrepresented that image.

Middle school students learn about life in the concentration camps in World War II, and the importance of human kindness, from Holocaust survivor and author Marion Lazan, who visits the school. Eighth-graders also read “Night,” by Elie Wiesel.

In high school, students study Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in Germany, the roots of antisemitism in Europe, and the role the United States before, during and after the Holocaust.

Instruction is embedded in the English language arts and social studies curriculums, and through special school events.

Learning about the Holocaust has a whole different meaning at Lawrence Middle School and Hebrew Academy of the Five Towns and Rockaway Middle School, where students collaborate on the Names Not Numbers Holocaust Memorial Project each year. They research the Holocaust and interview a Holocaust survivor.

“It’s really powerful,” Lawrence Superintendent Ann Pedersen said. “It’s really beautiful to see the connection between the school and the diversity of the kids that are involved.”

Students meet once a week, and work until the spring to complete the project, and then present their work at HAFTR Middle School to families and staff.

The project has been part of the schools’ schedules for the past 10 years, and the informational flyer about this year’s program was recently sent to district families.

“Students begin not really knowing much about each other,” Pedersen said. “They’ve never been in class together, their lives don’t really overlap in a lot of ways, so to see them joined and working together to create such a powerful project is quite remarkable.”

In remembrance of the Holocaust, a small coalition of organizations, including Britvan’s, joined together in an effort to have state landmarks, such as the Empire State building, One World Trade Center, Niagara Falls, Nassau County’s executive and legislative buildings and others lit yellow for International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Jan. 27 last year. Yellow is the remembrance color of the Holocaust.

Britvan said that Holocaust education should be a requirement not only in New York, but also throughout the United States.

“It’s not the fact of going yellow for the sake of, ‘Wow, this is great, we went yellow!’” he said. “Once you get 50 states, or a vast majority, involved, now you have relationships with all those governors.”