Nearly 83 years ago, the Holocaust ravaged Germany—and yesterday, juniors and Tikkun Olam members gathered in the auditorium to understand how the events and lessons of the Holocaust continue to impact the life of every individual.
JoAnn Battat and Rachel Tanchak, co-presidents of Tikkun Olam, delivered opening remarks to the audience. Tanchak said that while Tikkun Olam has hosted Holocaust speakers in the Black Box theater after school, this is only the club’s second assembly in the main theater.
“This assembly means so much to me, not only as a Jew, but also as a person. It is so important to teach people our age about the Holocaust so that history does not repeat itself,” Tanchak said.
The assembly featured guest speaker Avi Hoffman, the director of the Dachau Album Project. Hoffman, the son of Holocaust survivors, shared the story and significance of his project.
According to Hoffman, Dachau, the first concentration camp established by Adolf Hitler, served as the model for future camps. It was at Dachau that American soldiers gave 15-year-old Arnold Unger an album containing 50 pieces of Holocaust artwork and more than 250 photographs. After Unger left Germany for the United States, the album remained in the top shelf of his closet, hidden from the public eye.
After Unger committed suicide, his daughter, Shari Unger Klager, discovered this memento from the past and shared her findings with Hoffman.
“What I discovered changed my life,” Hoffman said. “This album connects the worlds of Christianity and Judaism, art and reality, life and death, love, desperation and the ultimate triumph of hope and the human spirit,” he said.
From the artwork of a Catholic Dachau prisoner to the stories and photographs of Arnold Unger, the contents of the album led Hoffman to realize that the Holocaust impacted not only six million Jews, but also six million other innocent people of varying age, race, religion and ethnicity.
“I love how the assembly stressed how the war and the camp pertained to more than just Jews. I think that is very important to point out, especially in a school with students of mixed religions,” Battat said.
Hoffman said he plans to open exhibits around the world and teach young people about the importance of the album, and he even brought the Dachau album to the Pope. “After I found out that the artist [of the work in the album] was Catholic, I was on a mission to introduce the Pope to the art of this Catholic artist whose life was destroyed by the Holocaust,” he said.
Following the discussion, juniors watched a trailer of the Dachau project documentary film and engaged in a question-and-answer session with Hoffman and Klager. As they exited the theater, juniors had the opportunity to view the actual Dachau album.
“We have to learn the lessons of the past so that we don’t repeat them in the future,” Hoffman said at the end of the assembly.
“The message behind the presentation is incredibly important: the Holocaust shouldn’t be remembered as a slaughter of Jews. It should be remembered as a slaughter of people,” Tanchak said.
