On the eve of the week ushering in the observance of the Holocaust, Frieda Lewis, president of Hadassah, urged Governor Hugh Carey “to approve an appropriation of $125,000 in the State Department of Education budget for the first of two years for the development of resource materials and a teacher-training course.”
At the same time, Mrs. Lewis also wrote to the State Education Commissioner Gordon Ambach suggesting that such a course should “be taught as a watershed event of human history and that it shall not be lumped as one other example of human rights violations. Indeed, we believe that from this horrendous event, the particular experience will translate for the students into an unforgetable universal lesson.”
In a letter to State Senate majority leader and Assembly majority leader Stanley Fink, Mrs. Lewis said “we believe that our officials have been remiss until now in not memorializing and passing on to future generations of our citizens the lessons of the Holocaust. We look forward to your leadership in guiding this item through the budget approval process.”
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.