7th grade Fortunoff visit

Hey everyone! My name is Kristia Wantchekon and I am the Seventh Grade Humanities teacher at Grant this year. This summer, I'm teaching the kids about war and conflict during the 20th century, and naturally, in the last week we have found ourselves exploring World War II. Learning about the Holocaust in depth was something I found to be indispensible when planning my lessons for the summer, and this past Friday, the students and I were able to take advantage of the amazing Holocaust educational resource we have right here on campus, the Fortunoff archives. For those not familiar, the Fortunoff archives is a collection of some 4300 testimonials from various people whose lives were directly touched by the Holocaust and general the mass discrimination and subjugation of Jews that occurred during World War II (website: http://www.library.yale.edu/testimonies/).

On Friday, the entire 7th grade and I headed down to Bass Library for a two and half hour session with Joanne Rudof who works for the project, and we were all completely blown away. Mrs. Rudof collected for the kids a selection of testimonials that involved primarily people who were children during the time of World War I. The fact that these stories often involved children definitely resonated with the students; it was clear that many of them felt a personal connection to these stories because of the similarities in age to themselves. Although the session lasted for about two and half hours the students were riveted and actively asked many questions and yearned to know more, some even asking to return at a later date to watch the rest of the footage (although with the 10,000 hours of footage that the Fortunoff has, finishing it all this summer would be Herculean if not entirely impossible).

I had them all write a response to what they had watched over the night, and responses I got were all incredibly thoughtful and insightful. Many of the students vocalized their distress over the horrors they had learned of from these victims, and were in disbelief that something of the sort could even happen, that humanity could even go to such a dark place. They all noted that the testimonials taught them things they never learned in school, and helped them get them to deeply understand what had occurred in a way that textbook reading and lecture could not. It was interesting to read that some of the emotions described in the testimonials, for instance, unimaginable constant hunger, unmanageable depression, and the burning need and push to survive in the face of so much suffering really stayed with many of the students as they wrote their response and cited their wishes to never feel those feelings and better yet, let others feel those feelings. Many students wrote that they were committed to something of the sort never happening again, and it excited me to see that these stories really awakened a bit of budding activism in my 7th graders. My students insights this past Friday as well as throughout our lessons thus far have really awakened my own eyes to the simple truths I feel that I had begun to lose as my studies have taken me down more complicated, analytical paths on similar subjects. Taking a moment to remember something as simple as "no one should suffer like this again" really helps replace into perspective my own feelings on international human rights and more broadly, basic morality.