NEXT GENERATIONS is deeply committed to increasing awareness of the Holocaust through educational programs that teach our children and future generations through this living history the values of compassion, courage and commitment as responses to fear, hatred and evil. NEXT GENERATIONS has launched a unique and exciting audiovisual project, “Life after the Holocaust: A Legacy of Survival, Memories and Triumph,” to be used as a powerful learning tool for teachers, and middle and high school students. The inspiration that led to creating this documentary is the need to help others understand what it is like to grow up in families whose foundations are mounted in trauma, loss, persecution, and forced emigration from their homelands. Through the lessons and experiences of children of Holocaust survivors, we seek to provide these students with the hope and strength to overcome the challenges they face and to achieve success.
Phase I of the project, After the Holocaust: Children of Holocaust Survivors and Their Parents, focuses on the effects of the Holocaust on children of survivors, especially their struggles to understand the sorrow, loss and taboos that influenced their parents’ behavior. Like many of today’s refugee students, these children found it very difficult to navigate between their parents’ world and the new world. This program offers important insights into this family experience, especially for immigrant students in our classes whose families are political refugees or escapees from violent areas of the world. Phase I was implemented in several Palm Beach County schools in 2008 and 2009. Our goal is to have this program enter the seven counties in South FLorida for 2010. Our ultimate goal is to reach teachers all over the United States and use this program as an inspiring and educational tool for the classrooms.
Phase II of the project, Holocaust Survivors in the Displaced Persons Camps, currently under development, examines the difficult transition that many survivors made from liberation in Europe to resettlement elsewhere. Surviving Jews who could not return to their countries of origin were caught in a no-man’s land with no place to go with both Great Britain and the United States reluctant to allow emigration to their territories. It was in this atmosphere of personal pain and international tension that Holocaust survivors had to make decisions about their futures. Through this program, we want students to understand, not only what happened to Holocaust survivors and how they felt about it, but to understand the tragic human consequences of inadequate policies regarding refugees generally and surviving victims of genocide particularly.
Through interviews and archival photos, NEXT GENERATIONS’ Oral Testimony Project expands students’ understanding of the long-term consequences of the Holocaust for those who survived the Shoah as well as for their children and grandchildren. This project fills two critical gaps in Holocaust Education. First, it offers students a glimpse into the story of what happened to Jews who survived the Shoah. Second, it provides an important means for children and grandchildren to continue telling the personal stories of the Holocaust once the survivor generation is no longer able to do so. The two DVD set is designed for classroom use, with the interviews providing a focal point for discussion of survivors’ recovery and integration into post war life. Each DVD is 15 minutes in length and is accompanied by a teacher guide.
NEXT GENERATIONS needs your support to advance the second phase of this important educational project. We ask you to consider a financial contribution to support our effort. Your donation may sponsor a class, a student or the program in its entirety for a particular school for the academic school year.
As witnesses to the eyewitnesses, it is our unwavering commitment to educate future generations. We must carry the torch from generation to generation. Our Oral Testimony Project will keep the voices alive and honor our promise to "never forget." We hope you will share our passion and commitment and we look forward to hearing from you.
Please support our effort!
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Please send your check payable to NEXT GENERATIONS, c/o Nancy Dershaw, 140 SE 5th Ave, #451,
Boca Raton, FL 33432
