Terms such as rebellion, attitude, and sarcasm are frequently used to describe the behavior displayed by teenagers. After all, who doesn’t remember that phase of existential crisis, where the entire world seems to be against you and no one can understand your deepest thoughts and feelings? The misunderstood young man or woman resorts then to talking back and disrespecting authority. While there are some who could use tougher discipline, the majority of teens will show themselves to be quite polite, caring, and even interested, if given a considerable amount of attention and opportunity.
It was with this vision that Olympic Heights High School teacher Abbe Snyder, along with other teachers, decided to create a project where they would be able to pay tribute to Holocaust victims as well as survivors, on a grander scale than they had done in previous years. All the while they were creating an environment where students would be able to give back to the community through a learning experience. The project consisted of gathering names of Jews who suffered through the horrors of the Holocaust, and attaching the names to a set of beads made by the students, which would hang in a boxed structure they put together, and then placed on display in a showcase on the school campus. Various sources were used to gather the 960 names, including the Yad Vashem website database, relatives of the students and teachers, and those of local residents whose family members had either perished or survived the massacre. Snyder remembers that when she explained the project to the students they were very excited: “It was interesting to me how some students chose the names; they either chose their own first or last name. Even more interesting was the fact that some of my students who are from South or Central America and the Islands were able to find names.” The Yad Vashem database offers an option where you can find a person by their age. While some students chose names of babies and adults, most of them, like 17 year old Natalia, chose teenagers: “I chose a name just like mine, Natalia; she was 16. I didn’t know people could have the same names in other countries; I thought Natalia was a Latin-American name.”
Several other teachers contributed to the project, including Michael Klein, who submitted the names of 30 of his parents’ family members who were lost: “Personally this was an opportunity for me to memorialize their names; I teach the Holocaust as a semester course here, so the topic is a passion of mine.” Klein noted how his students are incredibly sensitized when introduced to such aspects of social studies: “The Holocaust is a unique event in history; it is used in the curriculum not to teach about the story of the Jewish people, but rather as a platform to study man’s inhumanity.” The purpose for the Holocaust Memorial Wall is to make the students aware of the horrific events that took place in history, and are unfortunately still happening . The students’ feedback speaks to the validity and impact of this project: “Before this project I already talked about the topic, but now that I’ve seen the videos and heard the stories I feel like I have more background information and am able to talk about it more in-depth”, says Juanita Gomez.
Mrs. LeGrand is another teacher who felt it would be extremely valuable for her students to participate in this project: “My mother and father-in-law are both survivors; it was very personal for me.” LeGrand’s father-in-law, Sam, had written pieces of his story as a survivor over the years, and asked her to compile them into a book a few years ago – a book which LeGrand includes in her students’ reading list: “While my students read Elie Wiesel’s Night, they can also read Sam’s story – a real person they could connect with.” Although Sam was too infirmed to attend the dedication ceremony, after learning of its success he expressed to LeGrand how incredibly touched he was that these High Schoolers would put in so much time and effort into a project like this, and that he feels that his goal of making sure the Holocaust would always be remembered has finally been accomplished. LeGrand reminded her students that they are the last generation that can say they’ve met and spoken to Holocaust survivors: “They can tell their children and friends about this; they’re a testimony that it was real.”
For one of LeGrand’s students, Stephanie Agassi, the Holocaust wall project was also very personal and important, since both her grandmother and great grandmother were survivors: “My grandmother’s death really took a number on me because we had such a close relationship; I felt obligated to do this because I would do anything for her, even die for her so she could live to see another day.”
Like Sam, Norman Frajman is another Holocaust survivor whose relatives’ names are part of the wall, all 126 of them. Frajman, who was born in Warsaw, Poland in 1929, became an orphan at the age of 12 after his mother and sisters were killed in the camp of Majdanek. Frajman was among the survivors who attended the wall dedication ceremony on April 2nd, and confesses he was incredibly touched. Frajman said the most important piece of advice he can leave for this generation is to: “concentrate on doing away with hatred and bullying; to create a better world in order to prevent future catastrophes and carnage. There is no room for genocide on this small planet that we live on. We must leave a legacy for future generations to learn to live in peace and harmony.”