Teens helping educators teach Holocaust history

Teenagers share knowledge gained on a tour of Holocaust sites with 60 educators. They are learning how to teach about concentration camps and genocide.

By WAVENEY ANN MOORE

© St. Petersburg Times, published June 18, 2000

ST. PETERSBURG -- The audience listened intently as 17-year-old Garmaine Ariella Pitchon spoke of her grandmother's Auschwitz miracle.

They also heard from teenagers Erin Bengele, Jared Leone and Zachary Goldman, each of whom for a brief moment had been transformed from student to teacher.

The teenagers shared their knowledge Friday with 60 educators who were learning how to teach the lessons of the Holocaust in their classrooms.

The teachers were learning from teenagers, generations removed from the World War II horror, because three of the young people have only recently returned from an emotional trip to Poland, where they saw concentration camps, gas chambers and mass graves.

"It was a very emotional, exciting, confusing trip all in one," Erin, 16, a student at Palm Harbor University High School, told the teachers who sat around tables on the third floor of the Florida Holocaust Museum at 55 Fifth St. S.

Noreen Brand, education director at the museum, said the teachers of kindergarten through 12th grade had traveled from as far away as Sarasota and Lakeland to participate in the annual summer institute.

During her brief talk, Ariella, who arrived at the museum clutching a sackful of photographs, told the teachers that her grandparents, Simon and Garmaine Pitchon, are survivors of the Holocaust.

She spoke of her visit to Block 10 in Auschwitz, where medical experiments were conducted. It was there, the Palm Harbor University High School student told the audience, that her grandmother had been given electric shocks and where women had been routinely sterilized.

Her grandmother was fortunate. The day she was to be sterilized, said Ariella, an emergency caused the Nazi officers observing the operation to leave. Only one ovary was removed and the doctor performing the surgery, who was Jewish, told her grandmother to name her first son after him. Ariella's grandmother went on to have four sons.

Ariella, who recently became the first teenager to be elected to the Holocaust Museum's board of trustees, said her trip gave her new understanding.

"I realized it's my mission never to let it happen again," she said, referring to the Holocaust.

The trip to Poland was part of the March of the Living program started in the late 1980s to preserve the memory of the Holocaust. Friday morning's speakers included three of the eight Tampa Bay area Jewish teenagers who were part of the most recent trip, which ended on a high note in Israel.

Erin, who lives in Oldsmar, recorded her memories in a large green scrapbook, which she took to the museum to share with the teachers. Amid the photographs of smiling friends, there were haunting images of barracks and barbed wire and graves.

Friday's audience also heard from Zachary Goldman, 18, who completed the trip two years ago. The son of museum director Steve Goldman, Zachary said the experience made him cherish his ancestors, his family and his religion.

"After the March of the Living, I began to see Jews as a people," said the recent Hillsborough High School graduate.

The teachers were particularly interested when Zachary spoke of sharing his trip with his history class. How did his peers react, one person asked.

"They appreciated what I experienced," he replied.

The two-week March of the Living program included a visit to Majdanek, where 360,000 people, most of them Jews, perished. It is the only intact camp that remains and could be made operational within 36 hours.

Jared, who graduated recently from Largo High School, recalled the day he visited Majdanek. Everyone was standing outside the mausoleum, he said, when a girl pointed to a rainbow that had appeared behind it.

"We said a prayer," he said.

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