Visiting the Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum

Longview ISD Foundation, Inc. Funds Forest Park Middle School’s Grant Titled “History Speaks:  a Day at the Holocaust and Human Rights Museum”
 
Sarah Ashcraft, Margarita Collins, Kiffany Gatson, Ella Gupton, Brenda Hernandez, Kristi McAdams, Brent Sims, and Danisha Terrell, Forest Park Middle School teachers, received $6,999.60 to fund an eighth-grade trip to the Holocaust and Human Rights Museum in Dallas.  On Friday, May 8, 117 eighth graders left campus on chartered buses for a day of learning and reflection.

Representing the eighth graders who took the trip, Aden Malone, Gerard Osorio, Jade De Silva, and Deliyah Sifuentes spent an hour with Kay Ray, Longview ISD Foundation’s director, to explain what they learned from the experience.

After Mrs. Gupton explained that students had read The Diary of Anne Frank and seen the movie, both she and the students said the museum experience truly opened their eyes to what they had read. Beginning their museum visit, students watched a documentary after arriving to help them understand the scope of the Holocaust across Europe.

The students said they had some knowledge of genocide and the death camps; however, they did not know how many camps there were and the true gravity of the period of time or how ghastly the camps were.  The students said that the documentary gave them a depth of understanding that a textbook cannot. 

Gerard Osorio said that he had pictured the camps as somewhat like a jail with the people simply waiting to die.  He learned, however, that able-bodied people were worked, often to death, in mines and other industries that aided the German war effort.  He also learned how families were separated as soon as they arrived at the camps—women and children in one line, men and young men who could work in another.  For most, the family members never saw each other again.

In history classes, teachers ask students to use both primary and secondary sources when doing research.  The Diary of Anne Frank, a primary source, provided students with direct evidence about the Holocaust by those directly involved.  The documentary then provided students with a secondary source that synthesized information from primary sources. 

The primary source students most enjoyed was the testimony of the survivors that they heard in the Dimensions of Testimony theatre exhibit.  There students heard men and women tell their survival stories.  Several survivors talked about the back-breaking work they did in mines, hauling material in crude wheelbarrows for hours with little food and water.  The brutal work alone killed many Jews.  Students heard survivors describe the harrowing stories about riding in crude rail boxcars from their homes to the camps.  Survivors spoke of the number who died on the route. 

As the students toured the artifacts, they stepped inside the railcar.  Jade De Silva went inside with twenty other students and reported that they were cramped with that few inside, but she noted that the actual boxcars would have been packed with over one hundred people.  If people died along the way, those bodies remained with the living.  Jade said she could not see once inside the boxcar, so she could only imagine the darkness and fear created as the boxcars moved along the rails to their destinations. 

Students said that one survivor lived simply because he was able to escape from the line at the camp and hide among the dead in the boxcar.  Students said that a few survivors found themselves surviving but at the same time questioning their faith, while others said their faith sustained them throughout the horror.

Deliyah Sifuentes said while some may have survived the camps, more problems awaited them once the camps were liberated.  When Allied soldiers arrived, starving, incapacitated people lay on the ground unsupervised since the German guards had abandoned the camps as the Allied armies approached.  While she thought the survivors would have happily met the soldiers, they were, in fact, frightened because all they could see were boots and uniforms.  Having been tortured by men in uniform, they were unable to understand that these soldiers were liberators.  Until they understood, they remained fearful.

As the camps were liberated, the Allied armies had the overwhelming task of relocating the Jews to refugee camps where they could be properly clothed, fed, and cared for by doctors.  Then came the work of getting them back to their homes.  The students learned, however, that for many survivors, they had no surviving family and no home to return to since the bombing had destroyed so many towns and homes.  The students said they contemplated what it would be like to start one’s life over after the war. 

The students viewed the primary source artifacts in the museum:  mounds of shoes, clothing, and suitcases taken from the Jews when they arrived at the camps.  Jade De Silva said seeing those items personalized the experience for her because the items looked so crude compared to what she enjoys today.  She also knew that those items once belonged to real people, perhaps teenagers just like her.

The students questioned why Jews didn’t try to flee Germany once the Holocaust began.  They said that, of course, access to national news is not what we enjoy today.  They relied on stories brought from others to their towns, but many refused to believe or thought the stories were too fantastical to be believed.  They said, too, that some, like the Frank family, moved only to be in another country that Hitler’s army invaded and then occupied.

Mrs. Gupton reminded students that one survivor said he had the opportunity to flee but would not abandon his family, for he loved his mother and could not stand the thought of leaving her. 

Mrs. Gupton asked students if they remembered what sustained Anne Frank through her captivity in the attic above her father’s business.  Writing in her diary was her only outlet since she could not go outside or be with friends.  Writing, she reminded them, is an outlet for people, a way for them to express their emotions, and because Anne wrote her diary, today’s students can read her diary as a primary source of discovery.

Gerard Osorio summarized the experience for all eighth graders:  the museum painted a picture for them and gave them a new understanding of history.  He felt changed from the experience.

The Longview ISD Foundation is proud to have offered this experience to Forest Park’s students, for the trip accomplished the goal of the John W. Harrison, Jr. Academic Field Trip Grant Program:  to provide learning experiences for students that expand classroom learning and offer hands-on learning that cannot be replicated in the classroom.