Shoah Story – Students spark genesis of Holocaust library

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4 days ago7 min read

This article has won an SPJ award and was originally published in our monthly Today Magazine — the topic is timeless and clearly relevant today

Special to Today Magazine

Editor's Note — In this exclusive interview with Today editor-in-chief Bruce Deckert, teacher Stuart Abrams comments on the Abby Weiner Holocaust Memorial Library at Avon High School and related topics.

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A social studies instructor, Abrams began teaching at Avon High in 1994 and has taught the Genocide and Human Behavior course for 20-plus years — he also teaches Human Rights in a Modern World, the sophomore history requirement for Avon students.

An award-winning educator and a gifted storyteller, Abrams is the adviser for Avon High’s UNICEF and Amnesty International club — he has been recognized as the Teacher of the Year by the Avon Public Schools.

• Cover Story on library – Post-Holocaust Hope: Honoring Shoah survivor

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• Regarding the connection of the UNICEF and Amnesty International club to the dedication of the library in Abby's name:

• Stuart Abrams — Abraham “Abby” Weiner (pronounced WHY-ner) is the best teacher I ever had — I think of him every day. He is the greatest teacher I've ever had in my life.

He was an only child, originally from the city of Sighet in Romania — he was a boyhood friend of author Elie Wiesel, who is also from Sighet. In 1944 Abby and his parents were taken to the Auschwitz death camp. They were on the same train as Elie Wiesel and his family.

Abby survived the Holocaust and later came to the United States. At first he lived in Brooklyn and eventually made his way to Torrington, Connecticut, his final resting place — no other human being will make that circuitous route from Sighet to Torrington.

The students in the club were the motivating force behind the library dedication — the club was a convenient vehicle for dedicating the library to Abby. Members of this club are examples of the extra level of commitment and creativity and insight that was needed for this project. I know Abby would have been happy to see high school students get this involved.

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The last time I saw Abby, he was in the hospital — when I walked out of his hospital room that day in January 2019, I had a sense that it was the last time I'd see him on this earth. He had such a significant impact on me and on students at Avon High School, given the many times he told his story in my classes.

Soon after, I wondered: What would be an appropriate way to honor him?

He had received an honorary Avon High diploma in 2017 — he wasn't able to earn a diploma when he was high school age because he was in Auschwitz.

As far as dedicating this library to him, the process was really organic. It didn't require a lot of thinking on my part — the pieces came together serendipitously. Sometimes divine intervention plays a role. I started gathering books about the Holocaust, and I thought of a portrait of Abby.

The library dedication was one of the greatest days in the history of Avon High School.

The night of the dedication — professionally, I've never felt like that, likely because of my relationship with Abby. It was well beyond any expectation I could have had.

• Regarding Avon High's trip to Poland in April 2023:

— Abrams led a trip to Poland during April vacation week — the trip took place before the dedication on April 19 of the library in Abby’s honor

— Students, staff and other trip-goers visited a number of concentration camps — following the path of the German army when the Nazis invaded Poland in September 1939

• Stuart Abrams — I can't find the words to describe the effect this trip had on all of us. There's something about visiting those places in person — I can't figure out a way to duplicate that experience in a classroom. These graveyards — these death camps — more than Auschwitz, Treblinka is the most haunting and haunted place I've ever been to.

After the trip, I received wonderful thank-you cards from students and their parents, but I don't see it as a testament to me — I see it as a testament to the nature of the places we visited.

You can't step on the grounds of Treblinka and be the same — if the Nazis wanted to keep one camp a secret, this would have been it. There were thousands of concentration camps and work camps, but only six extermination camps, all in Nazi-occupied Poland.

In my mind, they are the most haunting and haunted places on the planet — there is no place on the planet more evil than Treblinka. Students had a more visible reaction to Treblinka than to Auschwitz.

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During our trip to Poland, after visiting the camps, I gave students an opportunity to talk. I was so impressed by these students and their ability to be thoughtful, cogent and insightful — they were brilliant.

I'm unabashedly hopeful about the future because of the students I work with — if people were lucky enough to sit in on my classes and see and hear these students, they would understand why I'm so hopeful.

When you see the size of Treblinka, how small it is — how that kind of machinery of death can be conceived by human beings is beyond me. It's estimated that the death toll at Treblinka was 850,000.

At Treblinka, no numbers were branded on the forearm — they went off the train and straight to the gas chambers. The deception the Nazis resorted to at Treblinka was so — despicable.

Supposedly the aroma from the Treblinka camp could be smelled 30 kilometers away — at least that's what they told us when we visited, but residents nearby said they didn't know what was happening. It seems humanly impossible that they didn't know.

The memorial at Treblinka is 17,000 shards of granite, all uneven — no names of victims are on these stones — except one: Jan Korczak.

• Editor’s Note — Janusz Korczak was the pen name of Henryk Goldszmit — a Polish-Jewish author and doctor, Korczak ran a Jewish orphanage from 1911 to 1942 in Warsaw, the capital of Poland

The story of Jan Korczak is well-known throughout Poland — he wrote children's books and had a radio show. He was a pediatrician who served as a doctor during the Russo-Japanese War in 1904 and 1905, and after the war he decided he could do more to help people if he worked as an educator.

• Editor’s Note — In July 1942, German authorities began deporting hundreds of thousands of Jews from the Warsaw ghetto to the Treblinka killing center — Korczak and his staff stayed with their children when the Nazis deported them all to their deaths at Treblinka in August 1942

He created an orphanage in Warsaw — the Nazis forced Korczak to move the orphanage to the ghetto after they invaded Poland and started World War 2. He was Jewish, but he was an assimilated Pole, and he was given the opportunity to go to the Aryan side.

• Editor’s Note — In 1942, Korczak’s Polish friends outside the ghetto offered to help him escape, but instead he decided to stay and continue caring for the children — on the morning of August 5 or 6, the Nazis arrived at the orphanage and sent Korczak and his staff and the children to their deaths at Treblinka

The story is told ... that as Korczak was walking with the children from the Warsaw ghetto to get to the train, a Nazi soldier stopped him — "Good doctor," the soldier said, "I can get you to safety" — but Korczak refused and walked into the gas chambers at Treblinka with his students.

In addition to being exposed to the human wrongs in the genocide class, I want my Avon students to be exposed to the human rights — I've said before that I tell my students they’re heroes-in-waiting, just waiting for the opportunity to demonstrate their courage. Human behavior is hard to predict and our circumstances are different, but we all have the opportunity to make heroic decisions like Jan Korczak.

The other day I experienced the best class I had all year, and it was really nothing I planned — I started with one question and then sat back and essentially listened. You can only plan so much. The content area I work in is different than math.

The question I asked was — are we or are we not our brother's and sister's keeper?

My students come from a variety of backgrounds and beliefs — there are Hindus, Christians, Jews, atheists. They were so articulately elegant in their answers and descriptions.

• Regarding state-mandated Holocaust and genocide education:

• Stuart Abrams — Connecticut passed a law in May 2018 that requires Holocaust and genocide education to be part of the curriculum in all public schools. In advance of the vote, I was asked to bring students to testify at the Capitol in Hartford — and the kids knocked it out of the park.

The state legislature voted unanimously to pass the bill because of the testimony of the students. It was an unbelievable experience — there were wall-to-wall people at the Capitol.

The place was packed, and the legislators asked me a few questions, and I answered as best I could. But then I said, “You need to hear from my students” — and they were just brilliant. +

This story won a second-place SPJ award in the June 2023 edition of Today Magazine, our monthly publication

Shoah Story – Students spark genesis of Holocaust library

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