by George J Elbaum

In the Academy of Thought and Industry the 7th and 8th grade students pursue the
union of thought and industry, of the mind and the hand. The students don’t
just memorize—they understand, by integrating and applying at every step. Each
concept is placed into the world. Each lesson is motivated with the exploration
of a real-world problem to capture the imagination and spark curiosity. From
the introduction of the number line in mathematics to a Socratic discussion on
the nature of the good life in liberal arts, we find no conflict between the intellectual
and the practical, and this continues as students mature and evolve through our
program. By high school, they get the chance to master, apply, and expand
knowledge on their own terms. Our students take film-making classes in order to
actually make movies. They take economics courses because they are starting
their own businesses —or more abstract economics because they want to
understand the theories that make up the living human world in which they are
preparing to take part. My audience of 27 students in grades 7th and 8th
Humanities WW2/Holocaust Unit was organized by Lead Humanities Teacher Jessica Lane. The students had read the Diary of Anne Frank and extensively studied the history of WW2 and the Holocaust, and had also completed a study of modern genocide.

My presentation was part of an afternoon of learning facilitated by the JFCS Holocaust Center, with workshops on Antisemitism and Hidden Children in the Holocaust. I was joined by Morgan Blum Schneider, Director of JFCS Holocaust Center, Beth Cohen, Director of Education, and Education Specialist Gloria Moskowitz-Sweet.

A few weeks after my talk at the Academy of Thought and Industry I received a dozen Thank You notes from the students, and as is our custom, my wife Mimi and I read these together after dinner, excerpted statements that most resonated with us, and these excerpts are shown below.

• Thought you may have heard this a lot, people need to know that historical events aren’t just words in a book, but they affect people for generations to come. (P.S. Here is a photo of my dog. He appreciates you too!)
• I really like the cover of your book. The cover of a book is supposed to demonstrate the most important elements of a book, so the fact that you as a kid are looking at a plane through a hole in the ceiling is the cover of your book shows me that this event played a big part in your Holocaust survival experience.
• I was especially interested in how you came into the aerospace industry after the war.
• You also experienced an anti-Semitic Nazi during your time in the aerospace industry.
• In history, we tend to usually only learn about one or two main perspectives in an event. I’ve learned a lot about the Holocaust in class by reading Anne Frank’s diary and studying the underlying conditions in German, but I’ve never considered how far the Holocaust reached. Your words helped me achieve a better understanding of these events.