In the May 16 print edition of The Jewish Press, we brought you a story about a Holocaust exhibit hosted by the National Association of Jewish Legislators – New York chapter, featuring a retrofitted cattle car to simulate one actually used in Nazi Germany to transport Jews to the concentration camps. The exhibit, organized by the non-profit Hate Ends Now, brought its CEO, Todd Cohn, to Albany. “The Holocaust did not start with cattle cars,” Cohn told The Jewish Press. “It started with everyday people that did not have the moral clarity or the strength, the critical-thinking skills, the ability to stand up to hate. What we want to do is arm the students with the skills to stand up to hate.”
Cohn said, “We see approximately 40,000 students per year and as many as 10,000 of them are graduating seniors matriculating into university campuses. What we want is for them to use those critical skills, that history and knowledge they’ve garnered from this experience, to be able to become allies, not of the Jewish people necessarily but of humanity.”
Picking up on this theme is the Mobile Museum of Tolerance, a project of the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC). Two buses in New York state began to roll last November and December traversing the state visiting schools and libraries. Besides New York state, the organization has spread out retrofitted tour buses across the country and Canada in California, Florida, Illinois and Ontario, Canada. The mobile museum will be expanding to Massachusetts later this year.
“Each mobile museum costs between $1 million and $1.2 million to build or retrofit,” Barbara Birch, executive vice president of development for the Northeast for the SWC told The Jewish Press. “It costs about $1 million to operate all year because of maintenance, the drivers, gasoline and overnight stays for the drivers. There is a whole team which has to prepare for all the visits, scheduling.”
“This is our first year. We are looking for partners who want to bring this to their community. We are also exploring corporate engagements to bring this educational content to companies and employees in a particular community. We’re really excited about it,” Birch, 51, said. “We’re constantly assessing and evaluating. We are working on creating new modules. We want to reach other audiences. Our primary audience right now are students, grades 7 through 12. Some could be as young as fifth grade. We are creating new modules that will come out this fall for teacher training. We also want to think about how we can engage adults in these conversations and how we can have more of an impact community wide.”
The tour bus made a stop at the ballpark where the New York Yankees minor league team, the Hudson Valley Renegades, play. There were two yellow school buses letting off students to go to the ballgame but not to take an early tour on the MMOT bus.
The educational aspect is dynamic, according to one of the teachers who gives his all to the syllabus.
“My job is to be the educator for middle and high school students. This job is all the best parts of teaching. It’s talking to students. It’s hearing what they have to say. It’s getting to help empower them. It’s showing them they have options. They have agency. I don’t have to grade any papers. I don’t have to do any of those other things that go along with being the teacher,” New Rochelle, Westchester County, resident Brian Strafach, associate educator on the Mobile Museum of Tolerance studio bus, told The Jewish Press.
“The message is about tolerance, anti-hate, anti-bias, anti-discrimination. It’s not just that we need to be more tolerant, because students understand that but we really get to focus on how I can be more tolerant. What actions can I take?”
“We’re just spreading awareness of our organization, of how to book us, how to bring us to your school district or your libraries,” Strafach, 34, said. “Our workshops tend to be 45 minutes long and if we were going to a library or a place that doesn’t come with a schedule, we would spend a typical work day. We can break up that time into whatever workshops the library is interested in providing.
One of the tour’s aims is educating students regarding misconceptions about Hitler.
“We want students to know historical facts because there is so much disinformation especially around the Holocaust. One of our goals is to clear up some of those things. I hear a lot of things about Hitler. I feel every day I hear some new lie about Hitler that’s out there on the Internet that students are exposed to,” Strafach said. “We’re dedicated to exposing that disinformation, correcting that disinformation. It’s not so much that we’re giving them a history lesson. What we’re doing here is trying to learn lessons from history.”
Strafach, who holds a degree in secondary education with a focus in English education, taught ninth grade English Language Arts (ELA) for 10 years in the New York City public school system. “After 10 years of teaching, I got to wonder what else is out there, what could be next, and I found this position open through Indeed.”
Besides focusing on setting the record straight about Hitler, there are currently strong Jewish and civil rights components. On the MMOT website, https://mmot.com/new-york/, you can find a description of the learning environment for the students:
“The MMOT’s 30-seat, wheelchair-accessible vehicle serves as a self-contained classroom, while delivering a field trip experience to its visitors. Led by a licensed educator, the MMOT uses immersive technology and facilitated dialogue to deliver carefully designed workshops that cover topics including antisemitism and hate, the lessons of the Holocaust, the Civil Rights movement, and decoding online hate, all taught age-appropriately. MMOT workshops empower participants with knowledge of the dangers of the past in order to create a better future.”
“We have an entire workshop on the Diary of Anne Frank. I tell students if we are going to value the words of this 13-year-old girl that means your 13-year-old voices matter too,” Strafach said. “We have pre- and post-materials for teachers. It’s about how we can turn the facts of the Holocaust or the Civil Rights movement into action today. That’s all student brainstormed.”
The MMOT can accommodate up to six workshops of 32 people per day. Workshops are between 40 to 45 minutes.
“I am not lecturing students when we show up to their schools. I am asking students questions. This is all conversation-based. This is all inquiry-based. I’m a listener. I’m here to ask the questions. I’m here to guide the conversation so that the students come up with the ideas themselves. It’s so much more powerful when you decide what you can do versus someone telling you what you can do,” Strafach said. “It is about action. It’s about students feeling empowered to do something no matter how small or big.”
Strafach said he is optimistic about the future. “One of the things that leaves me most hopeful in this job is knowing how dedicated young people really are to this action of tolerance.”
The MMOT bus will be visiting the Ulster County Fair (Tuesday, July 29 through Sunday, August 3) and the Great New York State Fair in Geddes, a suburb of Syracuse, Onondaga County (August 20 through September 1).
