Holy Cross students study the Holocaust

A group of ten Holy Cross sophomores has been hearing from American soldiers, talking with the children of survivors, and studying the rhetoric and propaganda - all to gain a better understanding of the Holocaust.
Although most of the boys said their grandfathers had served in the Navy, Army, and Marines during World War II, the older men talked little about what went on at the time, let alone their own military experiences.
Therefore, the boys have set out to learn. Over the past six months, the students have written a play about a young Jewish boy hauled off to a concentration camp, read The Poisonous Mushroom, a children’s story condemning Jewish people, and listened to a Rabbi speak about reconciliation. They plan to attend a Passover Seder, visit the United States Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., and build a memorial fence, inscribed with the same saying written on the concentration camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau.
There are no tests or quizzes for the course - instead there will be response papers, presentations, and class participation each counting towards a student’s grade.
“It’s not true or false, or multiple choice, this is learning,” said Michael Genovese, a theology teacher, who helped start the Holocaust-geared program.
Teachers often point to the “Pyramid of Hate” as their model for human behavior to show how prejudice can escalate to violence and genocide.
At the heart of the course is the idea that the insightful teens will use what they learn to promote tolerance, said school officials who committed 11 teachers to the project, the Flushing school’s first interdisciplinary course.
“The philosophy of our education is to teach not only the mind but the heart as well,” Genovese said.
For several years, Assistant Principal Loreen McCarthy had hoped to start an interdisciplinary program, where students would cover related materials in their theology, math, science, history, literature, and language classes. But what subject was so important as to require in-depth analysis?
Teachers at the all-boys Catholic high school, located at 26-20 Francis Lewis Boulevard, surveyed their students about the many possibilities, and the Holocaust and World War II came out the top topic of choice. The subject fit with the school’s desire to educate students about important historical events.
“The more we know about our Judeo-Christian heritage, the more we know about ourselves,” Genovese said.
“It seemed really interesting. It is a small group. Before I had just a general idea of the Holocaust, but this was much more in depth,” said student Kevin Smith.
Along the way, Smith and his fellow students learned a few things - that anti-Semitism ran rampant in the Soviet Union as well as Germany, that children were enlisted in Hitler Youth groups, and that Hitler used three tactics to quash Jewish people and other minorities - isolation, humiliation, and dehumanization.
In May, Holy Cross will put up the “Fence of Tolerance” - decorated with the saying, “Forever let this place be a cry of despair and a warning to humanity” in several languages.
However, beforehand, the students will study the more recent genocide in Rwanda and ongoing conflict in Darfur. The boys will then be charged with telling their friends, classmates, teammates, and lab partners.
“These things are still going on today,” said their English instructor Lisa Petri. “How can we get this out to the community? … There are other teenagers who might not know.”