The General Assembly yesterday approved a resolution calling for expanded opportunities for Kentucky public school children to learn about the Holocaust and other acts of genocide.
House Joint Resolution 6 is named after the late Ernie Marx of Louisville, a Holocaust survivor who made a life's mission to spread education about the horrors he witnessed.
The resolution would direct the Department of Education to make curriculum materials available for optional use in public schools by March 2009.
The resolution reflects four years of efforts by middle-school students at St. Francis of Assisi School in Louisville, where Fred Whitaker offers instruction on the Holocaust and takes students to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.
"These middle school students really knew something we should all know," Whitaker said. "They really knew there was something powerful that (happens) to anyone when they study the Holocaust and genocide."
The Senate deleted a clause in the House version that cited other people the Nazis deemed "undesirable" because of their "race, nationality, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, religion, and political ideology."
Whitaker said he received indications earlier in the session that the reference to sexual orientation was a "red flag" that could have endangered the bill.
Whitaker said that, even without the language on other victims of the Nazis, "you can't study the Holocaust and not also come across pink triangles," the insignia that homosexual prisoners were forced to wear.
The Holocaust museum says the Nazis arrested about 100,000 men as homosexuals and that an unknown number died amid brutal conditions.
Marzian said she could accept the Senate changes.
"You have to compromise in legislation," she said.
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2 comments:
Something DOES happen to people when they study the Holocaust. As a teacher, I've made the issue one of my professional research topics; I have a really excellent resource in the Cohen Center, located at a state college that's reasonably local. I'm attending a summer fellowship there this year, and I attend at least three or four of their workshops over the course of each year.
I'm actually hoping to hear back from the USHM in D.C. about materials specific to the GLBTQ experience in the Holocaust. I contacted my liaison at the Cohen Center to ask if that issue would be covered this summer, and was told that they didn't have any resources available. I'm making it my mission to make sure those resources ARE available THIS summer.
I'm glad to hear that.
During my entire public school experience I never was taught about homosexuals in the holocaust. The words were never mentioned.
It's sad, 34 years later they still aren't teaching it.
Hiding the truth in education is not education at all.
They are hiding part of history and that is just plain wrong and irresponsible.
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