For some, their first Holocaust exposure
Students from Bloomingdale join Moriah peers to hear a survivor’s story
Standing in the Holocaust Sculpture Garden at the Moriah School in Englewood, Moriah eighth-graders and 37 peers from Walter T. Bergen Middle School in Bloomingdale listened as Moriah Middle School Associate Principal Tzipporah Boim read “The Butterfly,” a poem written by 23-year-old Pavel Friedmann shortly before he was sent to his death at Auschwitz in 1944.
She connected the poem to the spotted orange butterfly recently renamed in Israel in memory of four-year-old redhead Ariel Bibas, murdered by Hamas terrorists in captivity along with his mother, Shiri, and his baby brother, Kfir.
The Moriah students, all too familiar with Ariel’s tragic story, were stunned to see that their mostly non-Jewish public-school counterparts didn’t recognize the child whose picture Ms. Boim held up.
To be fair, the two groups weren’t meeting to discuss Israel’s war with Hamas or the hostages in Gaza. Their encounter on the eve of Yom HaShoah — Holocaust Remembrance Day — was planned around hearing a presentation by a Holocaust survivor, reflecting on the lessons of the Holocaust, and generally getting acquainted with one another.
But this unexpected butterfly moment provided a valuable lesson, said Michelle Lowensteiner of Bergenfield, the school psychologist at the Bloomingdale school. (Bloomingdale is in Passaic County.) Her own children’s Holocaust education experiences at Moriah prompted her to suggest the joint encounters three years ago.
She felt it was important and beneficial for the Moriah students to realize that their peers’ lack of knowledge about the Bibas family did not indicate indifference or a lack of caring, but only that “they may not be privy to the news,” Ms. Lowensteiner said.
For her, this incident underlined the value of getting the two student groups out of their respective bubbles for mutual education and conversation. They’d had their first meeting in November to learn about Kristallnacht and antisemitism.
Ora Eichenwald, a Moriah eighth-grader from Englewood, said the prospect of being with the Bloomingdale students again was “the reason I woke up so excited” on April 23.
“I remembered them from when they came earlier in the year,” she said. “I talked to so many students, and we really found common interests even though we’re so different. I learned so much about them and what they are interested in as well. I was glad to have the opportunity to teach them about the Holocaust, and the Israeli hostages, and now they know this information and can use it and share it too.”
Rachel Schwartz, Moriah’s Holocaust education coordinator, arranged for the mixed group of students to hear from nonagenarian survivor Miriam Edelstein.
Ms. Edelstein described her family’s perilous journey from Poland eastward to Siberia, where they spent most of the war years suffering from personal insecurity, food insecurity, and pervasive cold. After the war, she returned to her hometown, only to discover that its Jewish former residents were not welcome there.
Reminding the kids that they were going to be the last generation to meet a Holocaust survivor, Ms. Edelstein implored them never to be silent in the face of hatred and bigotry. She compared the antisemitism of today to the antisemitism of the 1930s, emphasizing the dangers of the current climate.
While the Bloomingdale school, like all New Jersey schools, has mandated Holocaust education, hearing directly from a survivor was a new experience for the students, Ms. Lowensteiner said. “I asked who had ever seen or spoken to a survivor before, and none of my students were able to raise their hands. So it was very special.”
One of the Walter T. Bergen students said, “The lady telling the story was very vivid in her retelling, and left me and many students from my school with a better understanding of the tragedies that occurred during that time.”
Moriah eighth-grader Zachary Katz of Englewood said it made his Yom HaShoah experience more meaningful when he could “see how different people want to learn about us. It was very meaningful to learn from the Bloomingdale students that it was their first time hearing from a Holocaust survivor, and they were really moved by it. I learned that they care about the same things we care about.”
The visitors joined in lighting candles in memory of Holocaust victims and got a guided tour of the Holocaust Sculpture Garden, where statues made of Jerusalem stone represent child victims of the Nazis. Wind chimes hanging within the sculptures symbolize the voices and souls of the murdered children.
The Bloomingdale middle-schoolers also toured a student art exhibit, “Spots of Light – To Be a Woman in the Holocaust,” in the Moriah synagogue. They were asked to complete worksheets in response to the artwork, relating what they saw to some aspect of their own lives.
“Many of the Bergen School kids have never been in a synagogue,” Ms. Schwartz noted.
“The big idea of the joint program is to create a sense of community amongst the Moriah and public-school kids. Often, we stay in our bubble, and to really get rid of stigmas and stereotypes, you have to converse with one another.
“The most fun part is when we give them breaks for snacks and socialization,” she added.
Ms. Lowensteiner said, “I think that being able to get out of their own environment and meet new people and learn that we’re not that different is going to go a long way to combat antisemitism. They see that they’re all eighth-graders and have similar interests they’re able to talk about. I think that’s really good for both sides.”
She always gets “extremely positive” feedback when she asks the Bloomingdale kids if they think the joint program should be continued in the next year, she added.
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