2008 Photos & Details

 

Sunday & Monday Tuesday & Wednesday Thursday & Friday Other Photos
 

Tuesday & Wednesday


Dr. Michael Berenbaum's lecture inspired teachers to expand Holocaust curriculum.

 


A sampling of the trunk of materials given to each of the teachers for their rural or inner-city schools.

 


YOUTH ACT! in action.

 


Students, teachers and survivors socializing

 


We stopped to visit Abraham Lincoln.

 


At the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum

 


U.S. Holocaust Memroial Museum representative Dan Napolitano greeted the group and gave an introduction to the Museum.

 


Holocaust survivor Henry Greenbaum tells a harrowing story of loss and survival.

 


Everyone wanted a picture with Henry Greenbaum (and with all of the survivors!).

 


On the set of Shear Madness at the Kennedy Center.

 The Holocaust Remembrance Project's most public event is the annual awards banquet at which clients and friends join Holland & Knight lawyers to award the Holocaust survivors, teachers, and student scholarship recipients. While some have had an opportunity to see the entirety of the project and its impact, it is seldom seen by many. Therefore, we are presenting scenes from the Holocaust Remembrance Project week, so that all within Holland & Knight can share in the poignant interactions among the generations.

Having heard the testimonies of seven Holocaust survivors with diverse experiences in Austria, Germany, France, Poland, Belgium, Czechoslovakia (then Sudetenland), Switzerland, and Great Britain, the Foundation's educational mission continued.

Michael Berenbaum, a leading Holocaust scholar, professor, and consultant in the formation of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, led a day-long symposium for teachers. In addition to his audience of teachers, Dr. Berenbaum had the benefit of living history – eight Holocaust survivors. Teachers commented on how this day of learning would alter their method of teaching the Holocaust into more meaningful and lasting experiences for students.

Teachers are chosen to join the trip in Washington, D.C. based on three criteria: 1) a desire to teach the lessons of the Holocaust more effectively; 2) critical need for Holocaust educational materials; and 3) lack of exposure to Holocaust survivors. Each teacher is given a trunk containing $1,000 in Holocaust educational materials that will impact the education of hundreds more in their school communities. Many thanks to Steven Shapiro for underwriting a 2008 teaching trunk, as well as donors Jane and Robert Berz who underwrite a teacher trunk each year.

The Holland & Knight Charitable Foundation recognizes that each young person that becomes the witness to the witness must also be empowered to teach others. To further the lessons of the Holocaust, students spend a day learning civil rights leadership skills through Youth Act!, a Street Law curriculum that develops youth leadership and vision necessary to advocate for meaningful change. Youth Act! teaches advocacy, legislation and governance, communication, coalition building, public policy, community problem-solving, public speaking, media advocacy, and the value of cooperation.

At dinner, the students, teachers, and Holocaust survivors shared experiences from the day. Students listened as teachers told them what they learned from a day with a world-renowned historian, and students shared the interesting civic exercises from the Youth Act! program. William Sessions and his family joined the group, and had an opportunity to meet with all.

That evening, many in our group had the pleasure of visiting Washington D.C.'s monuments for the first time. While most elders and teachers returned to the hotel after a long look at the Lincoln Memorial, seven very wide-awake students visited many other memorials for the first time. At the FDR memorial the students stopped and read the President's quote:

 

WE HAVE faith that future generations will know that here, in the middle of the twentieth century, there came a time when men of good will found a way to unite and produce, and fight to destroy the forces of ignorance, and intolerance, and slavery, and war."

On Wednesday morning the group assembled for cabs taking all to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. They posed for a picture in this uniquely designed memorial museum, prior to their tour of the main exhibit. If you intend to go to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, be sure to contact the Holland & Knight Charitable Foundation's office for information about tours – we have a great deal of experience with the museum and can be of assistance to first-time visitors.

On this morning, the last testimony of the week came from Auschwitz survivor, Henry Greenbaum, a docent at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. In 1939, when Henry was twelve years old, the Nazi's forced all Jews in his town to a ghetto where they stayed until October of 1942. At that time, Henry was chosen to work in the slave labor camp with his three sisters. There, they worked in a munitions factory. In 1943, Henry and his sister Faiga tried to escape; Faiga was killed, and Henry survived a shot in the head. In 1943, Henry was sent to buna Monowitz-satelite camp of Auschwitz to work for the I.G. Farben Company, and then to the concentration camp of Flossenburg in Germany. After a four month death march, Henry was liberated in Germany on April 25, 1945.

After an emotional day, touring scenes from the Holocaust with survivors, everyone rested at the hotel for a while.

That evening, the group had a chance to meet with Alumni members and students from Holland & Knight's Opening Doors For Children program. Together, they attended the play Shear Madness at The Kennedy Center, and had a chance to laugh a bit. Shear Madness recently celebrated its 9,000th performance at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. After the play ended, the Holocaust Remembrance Project group was invited to take a picture on the set, with the cast and then everyone gravitated to the large bust of John F. Kennedy for a pose that has become a tradition for our group each year.