2014-15 Holocaust Education Institute Reaches Educators from Throughout Southern California

  • March 30, 2015

Pictured:  ADL’s Matthew Friedman training teachers about the Holocaust (Photos by John McCoy, courtesy of LA Daily News)

Approximately 100 educators from throughout Southern California learned tools for teaching about the Holocaust during ADL’s 2014-15 Los Angeles Holocaust Education Institute.

The Institute launched the program in the fall with an all-day workshop, A Multimedia Framework to Teaching the Holocaust, in collaboration with the USC Shoah Foundation and was attended by teachers from throughout the region.

ADL trained participants to use ADL’s Echoes and Reflections – Leaders in Holocaust Education. A special feature of the day was instruction on IWitness, a resource from USC Shoah Foundation Institute with more than 1,200 video testimonies and tools for educators and students to develop multimedia projects. Teachers came away from the training with a complete curriculum on the Holocaust as well as tips on how to incorporate visual history testimony into a wide variety of classroom instruction and student projects.

The Institute also included Bearing Fruit: Exploring the Roots of Catholic-Jewish Relations from the Past to the Present (formerly known as Bearing Witness™)  Catholic school educators attended a day-long training on anti-Semitism, the Holocaust, and Jewish-Catholic relations on Friday, February 6, 2015 at the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust.

Lectures and discussions were led by Father Alexei Smith, a renowned leader in interreligious dialogue, as well as Rabbi Elliot Dorff and Dr. Michael Berenbaum of LA’s American Jewish University, who provided training on how to bring the lessons of anti-Semitism, the Holocaust and modern-day prejudice to Catholic school communities.

A third session was on Experiential Holocaust Education and included tours of both the Museum of Tolerance and the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust.  This session was on Friday, February 27, 2015, and it included an exploration of the new Anne Frank exhibit at the Museum of Tolerance, as well as time spent with a survivor at the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust.

The Institute concluded with an evening session on Anti-Semitism Since the Holocaust, on, March 26, 2015, at the ADL office.

The Institute brings together the finest resources to teach about the Holocaust from ADL, the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust, the Museum of Tolerance, and the USC Shoah Foundation.

For information on the Holocaust Education Institute, please contact mfriedman@adl.org or call 310-446-4231.