Facing History and Ourselves - New England Feed

Dr. Terrence Roberts Brings History to Life in Jamaica Plain, MA

EmilyBlackie — Fri, 25 May 2012 18:35:16 +0000

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In the News

May 25, 2012

Dr. Terrence Roberts, a Facing History and Ourselves board member and civil rights icon, spent last Thursday in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, speaking to students and members of the community. Roberts recounted his tumultuous and sometimes violent experience as a teenager in Little Rock, Arkansas, when he and eight other black teenagers enrolled in the all-white Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. The group was known as the “Little Rock Nine.”

Facing History’s study guide, Choices in Little Rock is grounded in this story and explores civic choices—the decisions people make as citizens in a democracy. Ronald Hobson, an eighth-grade social studies teacher at the Curley School, celebrated Facing History’s Choices in Little Rock unit as a cornerstone of his teaching experience, saying he finds its lessons invaluable.

During the evening community event at the Curley School, Roberts said “History is who we are. If we don’t know our history, we don’t know who we are.”

The event coincided with the 58th anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education. Roberts closed the event by challenging the audience to take civic responsibility.

Read “Civil Rights Icon Recalls Little Rock Nine History,” by Laura Plummer, in the Jamaica Plain Gazette.

Learn more about our work in New England.

Award Allows Teachers to Continue Justice-Building Program

EmilyBlackie — Thu, 24 May 2012 21:22:43 +0000

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In the News

May 22, 2012

Chris Retting and Sarah Shaw of Graham and Parks Alternative Public School, recipients of Facing History and Ourselves' 2012 Margot Stern Strom Teaching Award, are using the award to continue the Justice Builder Book Project. The project, part of their interdisciplinary humanities course for the school’s 7th and 8th graders, is the culminating assignment of the students’ Holocaust unit.

“To have our work recognized by this organization is a true honor,” Retting and Shaw told the Cambridge Chronicle. “This award also helps us fulfill a part of the work of Justice Building, by spreading the stories and recognizing the people who act throughout the world to make it a better place.”

As part of the Justice Builder Picture Book project, students create original dramatic monologues based on the stories of “upstanders” in World War II. At the end of the year, the monologues will be collected in a book and donated to the school library.

“Facing History and Ourselves is so much more than a curriculum or program,” Retting and Shaw said. “We and our students both notice how our outlook on life and the world is enriched. By teaching and learning through the lens of Facing History and Ourselves, all of us are challenged to be better people.”

Retting and Shaw, along with two other educators, were honored in a May ceremony that celebrated the 2012 Margot Stern Strom Teaching Award winners from around New England.

Read “Five Questions: Cambridge Teachers Win ‘Facing History Award,’” by Scott Wachtler in the Cambridge Chronicle.

The Margot Stern Strom Teaching Award was established in 2006 to honor the passion of Facing History and Ourselves' Founder and Executive Director Margot Stern Strom, and is generously funded by David and Nina Fialkow. Click here to read more about the 45 recipients from 2012.

Learn more about our work in the New England area.

Member of the Little Rock Nine to Speak at Community Event in Jamaica Plain

EmilyBlackie — Tue, 15 May 2012 14:47:06 +0000

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In the News

May 11, 2012

On Thursday, May 17, 2012, Facing History and Ourselves and the Curley K-8 School in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, will host an event open to all members of the community featuring Dr. Terrence Roberts, a member of the Little Rock Nine.

In 1957, Terrence Roberts was 15 years old when he joined eight other students to integrate Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. What followed, for him and the other members of the Little Rock Nine, were days of fear, courage, and uncertainty. Thursday's event will coincide with the 58th anniversary of the Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka Supreme Court decision.

Curley K-8 School Principal Jeffrey Slater and eighth grade social studies teacher Ron Hobson will co-host the event with Facing History and Ourselves. During their study, Mr. Hobson’s students have taken part in a number of artistic and academic assignments, such as reading Warrior's Don't Cry, the biography of Melba Pattillo Beals, also a member of the Little Rock Nine, and studying the cases of Brown v. Board of Education and Plessy v. Ferguson.

This event is free and open to the public. Click here to RSVP.

Read about the event in the Jamaica Plain Gazette and on The Curley K-8 School’s website.

Learn more about Facing History's work in New England.

Changing the World One Student At a Time: Principal Jose Navarro

EvaRadding — Fri, 11 May 2012 15:45:56 +0000

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Jose Navarro, a principal at Social Justice Humanitas Academy in San Fernando, California, speaks eloquently about his personal journey into education and how Facing History and Ourselves taught him that “I have the right, the responsibility, to draw on my entire life history to be an activist, and an advocate for my students.”

Navarro spoke at the 2012 Facing History New England Benefit dinner.

Read the text of his address.

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11 min 37 sec

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Boston, MA

Date filmed:

May 2 2012

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"To Give My Voice to Those Who Don’t Yet Have One": Aung Khine M.

EvaRadding — Fri, 11 May 2012 15:20:15 +0000

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Aung Khine M. recounts the harrowing tale of his family's experiences in Burma and their journey as refugees. He learned English in refugee camps, but it was when he became a Facing History and Ourselves student at Lowell (MA) High School that he was able to express the truth about genocide and horror, and what it is to be a victim simply because of who a person is. His teacher Ms. Morgenstern, and other upstanders and survivors, have inspired him. Facing History gave him the language to express things that seem beyond language. In his words, "I was 'the other.' Now that I have the language to do it, I am striving to help many more 'others.'

Aung Khine spoke at the Facing History and Ourselves 2012 New England Benefit Dinner.

Read the text of Aung's remarks.

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Video length:

14 min 29 sec

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Boston, MA

Date filmed:

May 2 2012

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Changing the World One Student At a Time: Principal Jose Navarro Speaks At New England Benefit Dinner

EmilyBlackie — Thu, 03 May 2012 14:54:14 +0000

May 3, 2012

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Administrator

Jose Navarro, a principal at Social Justice Humanitas Academy in San Fernando, California, moved audiences in Boston, Massachusetts, at last night’s New England Benefit Dinner. He spoke eloquently about his personal journey into education and how Facing History taught him that “I have the right, the responsibility, to draw on my entire life history to be an activist, and an advocate for my students.”

I am a serious history geek so it a pleasure to be here in Boston. After years as a teacher – a teacher who came to the profession the hard way I recently became an administrator, the principal of an inner city school where most of our kids know more people who have gone to prison than have gone to college. That’s not hyperbole. That’s a fact. My students live their whole childhood without. Books in the home, lunches to take to school, or even backpacks to carry those books and lunches in. Everything they get, they feel they have to take. “I’m going for mine,” they’ll tell me. “I gotta do what I gotta do.” There’s a kind of desperation in it. And that’s because these kids grow up without that sense that other kids take for granted,that sense that time is on their side. For my kids, it isn’t. Many of my kids have spent their entire childhood living under a cloud of violence and fear. Kids elsewhere may think they’re immortal. My kids know they’re not. When my students say “I’m goin for mine” or “I gotta do what I gotta do” as a justification for their actions I don’t want to change or squash my student’s instinct to protect or go after what is important to them, I merely want to expand their definition of what and who they consider “mine”. Does it include me? does it include my children? my students? I want my students to expand their universe of obligation; I want them to realize that they are their brother’s keeper. I believe that by purposefully teaching empathy, compassion, integrity, and reflection through our curriculum we can break down barriers and find common ground. Through our teaching we can help our students understand, NOT just judge others. And perhaps we can erode the dichotomy of “US” vs “Them”…and create a place of just “US”…no “THEM”… just US. I strive for this place—I Long for this place of “US.”

A place where tolerance is second to reverence AND we don’t just put up with those different then us, we seek to learn from them This is the essence of Facing History and Ourselves. As an educator, Facing History and Ourselves is not a binder that I put on my shelf and drag out from time to time. It’s part of my DNA now. It’s an approach to education in its totality. I know it resonates with these kids because it resonates with me. You see, it wasn’t all that long ago that I was one of those kids. I grew up in East LA. I had a mother who beat me, A father who left when I was 2 and didn’t come back into my life until I was in 9th grade. Don’t get me wrong. Both of them did the best they could. It’s complicated. It’s not black and white. Education was not a priority in my home. Getting by was. I didn’t have books. I didn’t have a lunch or a backpack to put it in. What I had was the lure of the streets…. Most of my teachers let me slide. But when I was in 9th grade, I finally crossed paths with a teacher who was willing to step in between me and my bad decisions. His name was Mr. McHarg. He was a history teacher. And our first real encounter was a rough one.My friend and I came to school stoned one day and we were throwing milk cartons full of sand over the fence – a big ivy covered fence. We couldn’t see on the other side of it, just hear the cars swerving as our milk cartons smashed against their windshields.

Mr. McHarg stalked over. I never saw him coming. He grabbed me by the shoulders, shook me– stuff I would be sued for today. And, then at the end of it, he paused and said, I know you’re better than that, man. Nobody ever said I was better than anything. Then He told me something that rocked me..he said you are the only one who can save you from you…And everything you need, you already have…use it… It struck a chord. His was the first class I ever got an A in. I could see that this man respected himself, and that made me respect him even more. But more importantly, he made me respect myself, he made me want to do better, to be better.

Call it serendipity, call it luck, God, or just plain fate, but at about the same time, my father came back into my life. I barely knew the man, and what little I did know of him, I learned from my mother, who, I can honestly say, hated him. It was a mistake that brought him back into my life. I had been in a fight at school, and the principal had accidentally called my father rather than my mother.
He rushed right over. He was a stranger, and I expected him to be a monster…I expected him to beat me. But he didn’t. He treated me with respect. It took me a while, but I realized that he was a good man. And a terrible man…its complicated. In his own way he was also a teacher. He told me, His mistakes, his missteps, his bad decisions, could inform my choices.

He offered himself up as a sacrificial lamb “Learn inside my head mijo,” … “Don’t make my mistakes…make new ones” He would say the lessons I learned from these two remarkable men, one brimming with self respect , the other wracked with regrets…melded in me. They gave me an insight into myself and a sense of purpose. If you asked me when I was 13 years old what I wanted to do with my life, I would’ve told you the same thing I’d tell you now. “I want to be a teacher.”

But there were a lot of hurdles I still had to cross to get there. No one in my family had ever gone to college. I was poorly prepared to chart a course for college, and so, one thing led to another, and I ended up in Oregon with my father.

I got a small scholarship playing soccer, and augmented that by working all through the school year and 500 to 600 hours of overtime every summer as a forest fire fighter.. A Hot Shot.
Good enough that when a wild fire broke out on Storm King Mountain in Colorado in 1994, my crew and I were called in to fight it. Nine of my buddies never made it out. And if you go up to Storm King Mountain today, you will find crosses where each of their bodies were found and a plaque with all their names. I don’t need to read them. I know them all by heart. They remind me constantly, just as my students do, that all of us are connected and that time is a luxury none of us can afford to waste. Maybe I was trying to unravel the lessons from Storm King Mountain, or perhaps pay back something I didn’t feel I earned but after I finished college, I joined the Peace Corps. It wasn’t long after my stint in the Peace Corps that I at last walked into an American classroom for the first time as a teacher. I’ll never forget it. I had been building up to this moment since ninth grade. I was 29 years old. I got the kids quiet. I didn’t have much problem with that…

They were looking at me and I was looking at them… And then nothing…..I had nothing to say. I had always wanted to be a teacher BUT I didn’t know how to teach.

That next summer, I went through my first Facing History and Ourselves training. I learned how to make the role of a teacher powerful. I learned how to shift paradigms, how to make my students feel history not just memorize it. But ultimately I learned how to use my curriculum as a means to change this world…one student at a time. And now when I have my class quiet….I know exactly what to say. How many of you have ever been picked on. How many of you have ever picked on someone else...the same hands go up. We have some work to do. That capacity to do evil is in each and every one of us…as is the capacity for good. And That is what I need to cultivate

What Facing History taught me was that I have the right,… the responsibility to draw on my entire life history to be an activist, and an advocate for my students…every award, every scar, every success, every beating, every credential, every condemnation, every embarrassing rebuke, every standing ovation…is my story and now they are to be my lessons. Facing History empowered me to fight for what’s right and to give my kids the tools to do that for themselves.

Because If I teach them how to write then no one has to write for them and if I teach them how to speak then no one has to speak for them and they will be prepared to speak up for others..

Since that first training, Facing History has become an integral part of my school. it has touched all of my teachers. Not just through the training it provided for my staff, the 3 day seminar that taught us how to make Facing History part of my school’s culture, not just through the recent training Dan Alba did on bullying and restorative justice, not just through the individual coaching and support my teachers get from Facing History. Instead, it is the way it teaches us to find the life lessons and the heart behind the standards… it is the part of our job that feeds our souls. It challenges us to challenge ourselves and our students to learn inside other people’s heads.

It works.

If you were to ask me what my highest goal as an educator is, I suppose it is the same thing it was when I was 13 years old and first said aloud that I wanted to be a teacher, it’s the lesson I learned from Mr. McHarg and my father, it’s the lesson that’s really inscribed in that plaque up on Storm King Mountain. In a nutshell it’s this, twenty years from now, long after my students leave my school, after they forget my name. ..my room number….after they forget the facts… This knowledge will endure… our leaders are great, and flawed… and so are we…its complicated

Evil happens when good people do nothing. It’s not enough to question authority you must also speak with it you have the right to be a bystander, you have the right to do nothing … but that doesn’t make you RIGHT. And ultimately my students will know that we are our brother’s keeper
And only by accepting that fact, by learning to stand up for ourselves and others, do we have a chance to become better people.

That is the essence of Facing History and Ourselves.
That is what we are here tonight to celebrate.

Thank you.

Lowell, MA, Student and Upstander Aung Khine M. Captivates Audiences at the New England Benefit Dinner

EmilyBlackie — Thu, 03 May 2012 14:33:57 +0000

May 3, 2012

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Student

Aung Khine M. captivated audiences in Boston, Massachusetts, last night at the New England Benefit Dinner with his harrowing account of his family's journey from Burma to the U.S. A student at Lowell High School, Aung spoke about his Facing History and Ourselves class and how his teacher Ms. Morgenstern and other upstanders throughout history helped him realize, “…that I could be a voice for those who had no voice. That I could speak of things for which there were no words.”

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, my name is Aung Khine M., I’m 17 years old, a junior in high school, a proud student in the Facing History program, and when I’m not in school, I work as a translator in Lowell, where my job is to help my fellow refugees from Burma find the words to express the horror they fled and to find comfort here. I do it because I can. I do it because I have to. I can and I have to first of all because I have a talent for language, a talent developed fleeing from one temporary refuge to the next. But more importantly, I have to do it because deep inside of me, I know what it is like to experience horror and to not have the language even to comprehend it, let alone describe it.

Before I explain what I mean, let me ask you all to do me a small favor.

I’d like to ask you think back, as far back into your own past as you possibly can, back to that before you really had language, before you owned the words to describe your own life. Can you? And what is your earliest memory? Is it the feeling of a place? A home? A person? Is it a safe place?

Let me tell you what my earliest memories are. Fire. And smoke. The sight and sound and stench of death as my village – it was a little place called Ondaw in the southeastern corner of Burma – became a killing field. It’s been more than 16 years since I was last there. And in the years since, I’ve heard the stories of what happened there a thousand times. I now know the words. But the words don’t express what actually lives with me in a part of me beyond language. I hear their voices, the screams and the smell of fire. Even though I was only a year old when it happened, those things effect you forever. They never go away.

I know this must seem foreign to many of you.

I could, maybe, try to make it easier to understand. I could explain to you now that my homeland was and still is ripped by violence, that the Karen State where I was born has been split apart by factional warfare for years. Some of you may already know that the Buddhist Karen rebels and the Christian Karen rebels have been battling each other for control, and I could explain how sometimes, innocent people get caught in the cross fire.

There are words for that sort of thing. Words like collateral damage. Civilian casualties. But words like those, language like that cover more than they explain.

What I lived through, then and later, cannot be explained away by political divisions, or ethnic or religious differences, anymore than they can be explained away by geography or the weather. Those are the how. But as those of you who understand what the Facing History program is all about – how it teaches students and teachers both to go beyond the easily stated facts – you understand the kind of genocidal violence I’m talking about goes beyond easy answer, beyond what words can express.

What happened to my family and to me, to my country and my countrymen, is something has happened again and again, to millions of people. It happened in Burma and in Rwanda, in Kosovo and in Germany.

And somewhere in the world, as we sit here, families are fleeing, the same way mine did. In our case, we were lucky. We could travel four days to a distant village, the place where my paternal grandparents lived. We had to walk, and when we could, we hitched rides on cattle trucks. My grandparents took us in, and for a while, we were safe.

But as all those refugees on the road tonight will learn, as all of those heroic survivors of other genocides who speak to us through the Facing History program know, safety is always temporary.

For us it lasted six years. And then one day, it all changed. Two old high school friends of my parents came by to visit. My parents had not seen them for years. They didn’t know that the two men were rebels. The government knew. And after two days, the military government came to arrest my parents.

They tortured my parents, and when they at last realized that my parents had no information that would interest them, they began to try to squeeze money out of my family.

My grandparents sold off a piece of what little land they had to pay the ransom. But we knew that it was only a matter of time before the government would come back to squeeze them some more. My grandparents told my parents, “They will never stop and there’s no escape from that. There’s no escape from not paying the ransom. They will arrest you for anything. They will grab you on the street at night. “

And so, under cover of night we fled, looking for sanctuary in Thailand.

For about another six years, I lived in a place that was very much like a prison, an inescapable prison because you were forbidden to cross outside of the invisible lines. If you did, you’d be shot. What I did was I stayed home, I read books, my mother would cook, and my father would do what he could for work.

One day, my father didn’t come home from work. We learned that he had been arrested by the Thai authorities – we were, after all, living in the country illegally. This time, they held him for two months.

We had no food. No means of support with my father in prison, but we did have one thing. My mother. She arranged to have us stay with a distant relative who lived nearby, she scraped together what she could and made her way to Malaysia, where she believed she could find work, and send for us when the time came.

Not long after she left, my father was released. He followed her to Malaysia, and promised that soon, we would all be together again.

He kept his word. After a year, my father sent a message that we could go to Malaysia. My parents made arrangements with the “agents” – you know them here is “coyotes” – who handle the illegal transportation of people.

The trip was an ordeal. I remember walking through trackless forests in nothing but flip flops, being attacked by leeches as we waded through stinking rivers – it took three months for the leech bites to heal. We dodged police cars at the border. But eventually we made it.

In many ways, Malaysia was better than Thailand. But we were still not free. For six months, my parents, who were afraid because even in Malaysia we were illegal immigrants, kept my sister and me under house arrest. But eventually, my parents came to the realization that we needed an education, so we started, they arranged for us to get to a school run by Americans for other refugees from Burma. It was while studying there – with my American teachers that I realized that for all the things that I had experienced for which there were no words, I had a natural talent for languages. The teachers taught me the basics of English. American movies taught me the rest.

Three years later, when at last, in November of 2008, we were admitted to the United States as refugees, that talent would become my family’s lifeline, and I learned to use it, to help others.

I was 15 years old. But when our case manager met us at the airport, there was no question that I was going to have to be responsible for all of our family’s needs in America. I spoke the best English.

I was like the man of the house because I had to do handle all of the paperwork, welfare, the food stamps, the fuel assistance. I was proud to do it.

And at the same time, I was enrolled in school. I did well. I knew the language. But it was at school, through the Facing History program that I really learned the power that language had, how my talent with language went beyond the ability to deal with the day-to-day struggles of being a refugee in America, and how it really gave me the ability to express the deeper truths about hatred, and fear, about genocide and horror, that I had learned back before I had any language at all to express it.

It was my teacher, Ms. Morgenstern who taught me those words. She taught me the words to express what it was to be a victim simply because of who I was, because of my religion, because of the place I happened to be born. Even now, when I go to school, she is the first person I speak to in the morning. I can talk to her, because she understands. She helped me to understand what I had experienced in Burma, taught me about my own country, and gave me language to describe it. She is the best teacher I have had since I’ve been in this country, not just because of the things she does, but because of who she is. She is an example. And she taught through her example the meaning of the word. Upstander. She is one. And she inspires me, makes we want to stand up, and to give my voice to those who don’t yet have one.

But she was not the only one inspired me through Facing History and taught me the power of words. People like the Holocaust survivor Sonia Weitz. She died two years ago. But her words, poems she crafted out of the horrors she endured, are still alive in me, and in anyone who heard or read her words. There was Netty Vanderpol, whose art filled in the spaces between other people’s words. And especially there was Jack Trompeter, a Holocaust survivor, who had spoken to my Facing History class. Just like me, he had been separated from his family as a child and hidden from the Nazis, I realize that I could be a voice for those who had no voice. That I could speak of things for which there were no words.

I hated hearing those stories, but at the same time I loved hearing them because there was real truth in them. What happened to Jack Trompeter is what happened to me. And now, when I think about the Holocaust, I immediately connect it back to my experiences, and the experiences of those who as we speak, are suffering.

Facing History gave me the language to express that. It has inspired me to use that language to help others. This is how I use that language now. As I told you at the beginning of this talk, when I’m not in school, I work as an interpreter for the International Center in Lowell, where I help other Burmese refugees, establish themselves here, in a safe haven, in America. I am proud to say that I have helped some 200 families since I started. My job is not just to guide them through the bureaucracy, which, to be honest, could be a full time job in itself. But my job is also to help America understand what these people have endured. I can do that because I have endured the same things myself. But I couldn’t do it, if I did not have the words, the language, to express those things that seem to be beyond language. Facing History helped me learn that language. It gave me the words. I was “the other”. Now because I have the language to do it, I am striving to help many more “others.” And for that, I thank you.

But remember. There are many whose stories have not yet been put into words, and so my work, and the work of Facing History is not yet done.

Remembering the Holocaust, Sonia Schreiber Weitz

EmilyBlackie — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 13:49:33 +0000

press_type:

In the News

April 24, 2012

Facing History and Ourselves Executive Director Margot Stern Strom spoke to an interfaith audience April 23 to commemorate the Holocaust at Peabody Memorial High School in Peabody, Massachusetts. The Holocaust Center Boston North hosted the event. Strom was honored with the Holocaust Center Service Award for her lifelong work fighting bigotry.

The Holocaust Center also made special mention of the Center's founder and recently deceased Holocaust survivor Sonia Schreiber Weitz, who was known for her tireless efforts educating others about genocide and the Holocaust and for her remarkable hope and optimism.

Strom spoke about her friendship with Weitz, and urged the audience to read her book, I Promised I Would Tell. Strom also stressed the importance of teaching the Holocaust, “We have a responsibility to prevent other genocides from happening,” she said.

Several area students were recognized as Sonia Schreiber Weitz Upstanders.

Read “Remembering the Holocaust,” by Alan Burke, in the Salem News, “Democracy Needs Community to Pay Attention to One Another’s Story,” by Tara Vocino in the Peabody Patch, and "Grandparents' Memory Remembered on Yom HaShoah," by Michael Sudhalter in The Sugar Land Sun.

Learn about other Holocaust remembrance events across New England.

Filmmaker Tells Tale of American Rescue During Holocaust

Nicky Enriquez — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 18:13:59 +0000

April 18, 2012

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Celebrity

artemis.jpg

BROOKLINE, MASSACHUSETTS - It all started with a school assignment.

“Interview someone of moral courage,” filmmaker Artemis Joukowsky III said during a recent conversation at the Facing History and Ourselves international headquarters in Brookline, Massachusetts, as he recounted the inspiration for his recent film, The Minister’s War. “I was in the ninth grade.”

He continued: “I was perplexed by the question – moral courage?” So Joukowsky went home and asked his mother what to do. “She said, ‘You should interview your grandmother.’ I was stunned. I said, ‘Well, what did she do?’ She said, ‘During World War II, she went to Europe and helped people escape the Holocaust.’ It had never come up before. It had never been discussed.”

For Joukowsky, the conversation marked the beginning of what has become a lifelong effort to uncover an untold family history. The release of The Minister’s War, for which Facing History is an educational partner, marks the latest chapter of his investigation. The intimate documentary portrays the heroic actions that Joukowsky’s grandparents – the Unitarian Universalist minister Waitstill Sharp and his wife, Martha – took during the early years of the war. The movie is as much an inspiring tale of human perseverance and courage as it is a poignant family portrait.

This, in a nutshell, was the story Joukowsky’s grandmother told him so many years ago: The year was 1939 and she and her husband were living in Wellesley, Massachusetts, raising two young children. One day they had a telephone call from the American Unitarian Association. The association asked if the Sharps would leave home and go to Europe to carry out a humanitarian rescue effort. Nazi-led Germany was gaining power across the continent and people of all sorts – political liberals, Jews, and also Unitarian Universalists – were being driven from their communities and targeted. The Sharps were torn. As Unitarian Universalists, they believed that everyone – no matter their beliefs, religion, or skin color – should have the freedom of thought and religion. But they had two children. Their hesitation increased when they learned that they were not the association’s first choice to lead the mission. Seventeen couples before them had said no to the request. Ultimately, the Sharps decided to go. Leaving their children behind, they travelled to Prague and arrived less than one month before the Nazis occupied the country. The Sharps stayed for five months and then returned to Europe for a second mission, the whole time working to shuttle people – primarily children and Jews – to safety. By the time they returned to the United States in December of 1940, more than 2,000 were saved as a result of their efforts.

Martha and Waitstill Sharp, undated photo.

The story Joukowsky heard that day stayed with him long after he handed in his school assignment. “It really started me on this search a) for who she was and b) for what the things were that they did together,” he said. Joukowsky studied politics and activism in college and afterward, kept digging into the trove of family history. When his grandmother died in 1999, he was cleaning up her house when he uncovered boxes of her materials – documents, letters, and case files of the people she helped rescue during the war. The discovery provided him with enough fodder to begin making a film about the Sharps’ experience. He hired filmmakers, historians, and detectives and began tracking down the people who survived as a result of their actions. As his work progressed, the collection of historical documents related to his grandparents’ efforts grew. The documents – 1,200 and counting – piece together an intricate and often untold history of American involvement during World War II. The archives are now housed at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. In 2006, the Sharps were honored as “Righteous Among the Nations” at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust remembrance organization located in Israel. The designation is an honor bestowed upon non-Jews who saved Jewish lives during the Holocaust. Since the 1960s the title has been awarded to some 22,000 people from over 30 countries – and of those, only three (including the Sharps) are American. Martha is the only American woman recognized.

The same year that his grandparents’ memory was honored in Israel, Joukowsky discovered Facing History. In her eighth grade class at the Dana Hall School, his daughter was reading the Facing History and Ourselves: Holocaust and Human Behavior resource book. “I read along with her and just fell in love with it. To me, the book read like a detective story. It was filled with short, concise chapters that provoked conversation. And throughout that year, I just saw [my daughter] Alexandra transform,” Joukowsky said. He reached out to Laura Tavares, senior program associate for Facing History. Ultimately, Tavares and Joukowsky worked to create The Minister’s War, an online educational resource for educators looking to incorporate the film into classroom discussions. The resource, available on the Facing History website in April, will be the latest addition to the organization’s collection of classroom resources that focus on rescue and resistance during the Holocaust.

“The work Facing History does to blend the historical with the personal – to start with the idea that all of us are upstanders and all of us are bystanders, that all of us are perpetrators and probably all of us have been victims – that is the most effective way to do it,” Joukowsky said. “And it speaks directly to the Sharps’ story.”

This spring, Joukowsky will appear at a number of Facing History educator workshops, including one in Los Angeles on April 16, one in Chicago on April 17, one in Denver on April 18, and one in New Jersey on April 25. Joukowsky will also attend an educator workshop and a community event in New England on April 25.

“Education curriculum is the key,” said Joukowsky, who is collaborating on the film with another daughter, Emma Blaxter. “If young people are exposed to this type of story early, we can talk about the Holocaust in a very different way.”

He hopes the film is an inspiration for people young and old to stand up for their beliefs. “These were ordinary people who were upstanders,” Joukowsky said. “The legacy of this story is that anyone can help. Just because the Red Cross is there, or the United States government is sending troops somewhere, and you’re just an ordinary person, that doesn’t mean there is nothing you can do. There are so many various ways to provide help.”

And he is quick to point out that upstander behavior does not mean risking your life or becoming a “hero.” “There are many Martha and Waitstill Sharps today,” Joukowsky said. “So part of taking action is thinking about, ‘Who are they?’ And, ‘How can we help them to be more successful?’”

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Learn more about The Minister’s War and explore the Facing History online educational resource for the film.

Facing History’s Julia Rappaport wrote this article. For questions or tips on what Facing History is doing in your community, email her at Julia_Rappaport@facing.org.

Boston Globe Features Harvard-Bound Student Active with Facing History, Diversity Initiatives

EmilyBlackie — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 16:41:29 +0000

press_type:

In the News

April 18, 2012

A Boston College High School senior who has been involved with Facing History and Ourselves throughout his high school career has been featured in the Boston Globe. Yousif Hanna, who will enroll at Harvard University in the fall, immigrated to the United States from Iraq in 2009. Hanna knew little English when he arrived in Boston with his parents, but worked hard at academics, as well as within his school community. During his time at B.C. High, Hanna worked closely with Facing History staff to create extracurricular projects at his high school that promote social justice. He is a member of the student-run Diversity Cabinet and is the leader of the Middle Eastern Club – a diverse group that brings together students of varying backgrounds and nationalities. Hanna has also been a featured speaker at Facing History educator seminars.

“I’ve become extremely hopeful about the world’s future,’’ Barbara O’Brien-Miller, director of the school’s diversity office, told the Boston Globe, “if we can keep finding young men of this character.’’

At Harvard, Hanna plans to study politics and international relations. This month, he won a certificate of accomplishment from the Princeton Prize in Race Relations committee for his efforts to improve race relations within his school community. And at a recent all-school ceremony, he received an award for demonstrating exceptional character, academic achievement, and service to his school and community.

Read “Diverse BC High group heads to Harvard” by Joseph P. Kahn in The Boston Globe.

Learn more about our work in New England.