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https://theconversation.com/bearing-witness-after-the-witnesses-are-gone-how-to-bring-holocaust-education-home-for-a-new-generation-272491>
"Joe Engel was and remains an icon in Charleston, South Carolina. Born in
Zakroczym, Poland, he survived Auschwitz and several other concentration camps
and fought with the resistance before landing on American shores as a refugee
in 1949.
After retirement from his dry-cleaning business, Engel focused his later years
on Holocaust education. As part of these efforts, he took to sitting on
downtown park benches wearing a name tag that read “Joe Engel, Holocaust
Survivor: Ask me questions” – becoming the city’s first public memorial to the
victims of Nazi genocide. Knowing he would not be here to impart his message
forever, Engel and his friend and fellow survivor Pincus Kolender led a drive
to install the permanent memorial that now stands in Charleston’s Marion Square
park.
In 2021, I moved to the city to take up my role as a professor and director of
Holocaust studies at the College of Charleston. I arrived just in time to meet
Engel and to teach many local students who had met him. He died the following
year, at age 95.
For years, historians, educators and Jewish groups have been considering how to
teach about the Holocaust after the survivors have passed on. Few of today’s
college students have ever met a Holocaust survivor. Those who have likely met
a child survivor, with few personal memories before 1945. American veterans of
the war are almost entirely unknown to our present students; many know nothing
of their own family connections to World War II.
Time marches on, distance grows, and what we call “common knowledge” changes.
One alarming study from 2018 revealed that 45% of American adults could not
identify a single one of the over 40,000 Nazi camps and ghettos, while 41% of
younger Americans believe that Nazi Germany killed substantially less than 6
million Jews during the Holocaust.
According to a 2025 study by the Claims Conference, there are somewhat more
than 200,000 survivors still alive, though their median age is 87. It is sadly
expected that 7 in 10 will pass away within the next decade. With their absence
near, how can educators and community members bring this history home,
decreasing the perceived distance between the students of today and the lessons
of the Holocaust?"
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
