In what leaders called a “major step to encourage the teaching of the Holocaust in school systems throughout New York State,” the N.Y. State Board of Regents passed a resolution requesting the State Legislature to allocate $125,000 for the first year of a two-year statewide project to prepare course material and in-service teacher training courses for the teaching of the Holocaust as part of the Education Department’s revised secondary school social studies curriculum.
Laurence Tisch, president of the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York (JCRC), and Richard Berman, chairman of the JCRC’s Commission on the Holocaust and the Prosecution of Nazi War Criminals, lauded the Regents for their action and expressed appreciation to Commissioner Gordon Ambach and Social Studies Associate Kenneth Wade for their support for this proposal.
Berman noted that JCRC’s Holocaust Commission met on March 5 with Wade, who was representing Ambach, to discuss the need for Holocaust curriculum materials. Representatives of JCRC member organizations and Holocaust survivor groups participated in that session which ended by unanimously endorsing a call for action by the Regents.
“The recent upsurge in anti-Semitic incidents,” Tisch said, “makes a broader effort to teach our youth about the Holocaust all the more imperative. By learning more about the Nazi horrors, we hope they will come to realize the awful consequences of anti-Semitism and racial hatred that we have witnessed in our own generation.”
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