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here is a continuing focus on Holocaust education in the county, with the Lawrence Family JCC and the J Company Youth Theatre announcing a planned “Remembrance Reading” at 7 p.m. Tuesday at the JCC, and second-generation Holocaust educators Sandy Scheller and Sonia Fox-Ohlbaum pledging to take to schools the concentration camp uniforms their family members had been forced to wear.
Betzy Lynch, CEO of the Lawrence Family Jewish Community Center, noting that the number of Holocaust survivors is dwindling, said “as we enter the next generation we no longer will have the presence of these miraculous people in our midst. Their stories must live on. In our case, the power of our ‘Remembrance Readings’ is that the children are the ones delivering the stories with the goal of sharing them with other children.”
Playwright Michael Slade’s And A Child Shall Lead tells of Jewish life in Terezin, which was a way station to the Nazi death camps. Joey Landwehr, artistic director for the J Company Theatre, said the story tells of the Terezin children’s underground newspaper, Vedem, which translates as “We are Leading.”
“Through this paper, they not only united the prisoners of the camp but their hope was to get this to the Red Cross on one of their visits so they could understand the truth,” Landwehr said. “These young people had the forward thinking and bravery to work on an endeavor that proves that, as usual, it is the young that lead us. And that they are still leaving us today.”
Reservations are required for the 7 p.m. performance on Tuesday. More information is available via this website.
Scheller, who is curating the Holocaust exhibit that will open at the Chula Vista library in January, said actual uniforms from the concentration camps will help students to visualize one aspect of the Holocaust. Her grandmother’s black uniform had an X painted over its back. The striped uniform that the father of Sonia Fox-Ohlbaum had to wear is featured in some presentations by the Butterfly Project, which seeks to create and display 1.5 million painted ceramic butterflies around the world in memory of the 1.5 million Jewish children murdered in the Holocaust.
Cheryl Ratner Price, co-founder of the Butterfly Project, explains in the group’s current newsletter: “The Butterfly Project is committed to sparking acts of creation. Every participant learns about a child that was killed, but also more about themselves as they commit to learning this history and discovering their own identity and how we are more alike than different. Students are called upon to be a witness to the stories and to make a butterfly that is uniquely their own as a symbol of both remembrance and hope. Every participant carries the responsibility of being a voice for those who can no longer speak, and they do this knowing that they are not alone in this work. They are connected to others all over the world as a part of The Butterfly Project learning these lessons, becoming upstanders and making beautiful memorials of butterflies all over the world, including many cities in Germany.”
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“With the ability to go on line it helps to compare facts but learning from a first generation survivor can never be replaced,” Scheller said. However, with second generation survivors making presentations, including those with uniforms and ceramic butterflies, “there is no excuse for students not to learn, but it takes effort from administrators and instructors.”
Republished from San Diego Jewish World