The school will hold a special, week-long program on the Holocaust.
BRAINTREE − Students at Braintree High School will learn about genocide during a Holocaust Remembrance Week program which begins on Monday.
The week will feature a series of speakers, including a Holocaust survivor, as well as an exhibit in the school lobby of a portion of the panels from “A Courage to Remember.” The panels, which are from the Simon Wiesenthal Center, show the progression of Nazi Germany’s policy which resulted in the deaths of 6 million Jews and 5 million other civilians during World War II.
Gorman Lee, the school system’s director of social studies, said sophomores are studying the Holocaust as part of their world history curriculum. He said the students also learn about other acts of genocide, including the Armenian genocide, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin’s forced famine, Rwanda, Cambodia and Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Lee said he was shocked to see a recent poll which found that 22 percent of American millennials said they had not heard of the Holocaust or were not sure they had.
“It is unfathomable and absolutely unacceptable that so many young Americans have not been properly taught about the Holocaust and understand why it is so important to never forget,” Lee said.
The school has been holding the observance for about a decade.
Jack Trumpetter, an artist and a child survivor of the Holocaust, will speak to students on Wednesday.
The keynote speaker will be Ronnie Hirschhorn, a retired teacher, who will speak at 8:35 a.m. on April 4.
Carl Hobert, a clinical professor at Boston University, will speak on Tuesday.
Wednesday speakers include writer and performer Edythe Holzman, Samuel Bernstein, a Northeastern University professor, playwright and author of a book on the 1936 Berlin Olympics, and Dean College faculty member Daniel Osborn.
The presentations in the school’s Grabosky Auditorium are open to the public on a space available basis.
