Oregon passes state law to teach the Holocaust

12 states require Holocaust education in school

WASHINGTON – Claire Sarnowski of Lake Oswego, Ore., met Holocaust survivor Alter Wiener at a school event five years ago when she was 9 years old.

Because her aunt had arranged the talk by the Holocaust survivor, and served as his escort to the school and back, Sarnowski got to ride along when Wiener was driven home. The two started talking and formed an immediate bond. They kept in touch, with Sarnowski often persuading someone to drive her to see Wiener at his home in Hillsboro, Ore., about an hour away from where he spoke. They shared meals and stories. Sarnowski became increasingly interested in Wiener’s tales of living under Hitler during World War II and his life since then.

She thought other kids should learn about them too and began a campaign to get a state law requiring Holocaust education in Oregon schools. In June, Democratic Gov. Kate Brown signed that law, with Sarnowski, now age 14, looking on. Even though Wiener died late last year at 92, Oregon students will continue to learn the lessons he shared.

Oregon is the 12th state to enact such a law, according to the Anti-defamation League. Most of the states have acted in the past few years, and bills are pending in another dozen states.

In a telephone interview, Sarnowski said it’s very hard for young people to relate to the Holocaust, particularly in that there are fewer survivors around for them to talk to. It was the personal talks with Wiener, she said, that made it real for her. Surveys show that Sarnowski’s instinct is on target regarding young people.

Ignorance about the Holocaust is growing, particularly among young people. A survey last year showed that two-thirds of U.S. millennials were not familiar with Auschwitz, the largest Nazi death camp complex, located near Krakow, Poland. More than 1.1 million people were gassed, shot or starved at Auschwitz, including nearly a million Jews. Overall, the Nazis murdered 6 million Jews during the Holocaust, plus millions of Roma, homosexuals and others.

The Holocaust was the largest genocide in history, but not the last one. More recent examples include the Khmer Rouge’s killing of about 2 million Cambodian dissidents between 1975 and 1979; the Hutu slaughter of about 800,000 mostly Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994; and the Sudanese government’s killing of 300,000 civilians in the Darfur region, beginning in 2003.

“For me, being able to hear stories of survivors ... that connection was the most valuable piece of my education,” said Sarnowski, who is not Jewish. “Just to know what happened, what led up to it ... and that this is considered our recent history. It’s important to learn for the future and what we can do to make a difference in our own community. How we can stop the persecution of people in our schools for racial, religious (reasons) or just people who are different.”

She forged a special bond with Wiener, who was born in 1926 in Chrzanow, Poland, near the German border.

When the Germans invaded Poland in 1939, Wiener, his stepmother and his brothers fled, leaving his father, a grocer, behind to supply Nazi troops with food. When the family returned three months later, their father had been killed.

Wiener, then 13, was sent to several concentration camps and was eventually freed by Russian troops in 1945. The rest of his family died.

Wiener moved to what was then Palestine after the war and eventually joined cousins in the United States, according to the Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education.

He moved to Oregon in 2000 and began speaking to student groups, eventually making about a thousand appearances in schools, the museum said.

Sarnowski visited Wiener nearly every week in the last couple of years Kim Kenneson of Johnson City, Tennessee, and Nicholas Turner of Zachary, Louisiana, at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. of his life, she said, hearing his stories over and over and becoming special friends.

When the two approached Oregon state Sen. Rob Wagner, a Democrat, about passing a law, Wagner sensed that feeling too.

“That friendship was pretty magical,” he said by telephone from his Lake Oswego home. He said the planned 15-minute meeting lasted 2 { hours and – along with work with Oregon Jewish groups and Holocaust educators – led to the bill that became law.