Burnaby teacher gets lessons in the Holocaust

Even after a lifetime of learning about it, the Jewish Holocaust is still a mystery to Eyal Daniel.

The Burnaby elementary school teacher grew up in Israel, where he said the Second World War genocide, which saw an estimated six million Jewish people killed at the hands of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime, is ingrained in the education system.

But there are still some things Daniel can’t wrap his head around.

“There are two things that always I don’t understand,” he told the NOW. “I try to figure out how those people felt when they knew they were going to die and they couldn’t stop it. And the second thing is the other side – how those people were able to kill like that and somehow continue their lives.”

That mystery was only deepened by a three-week trip to Israel this summer for a program designed to help English-speaking teachers around the world teach the Holocaust.

Daniel was one of three Vancouver-area teachers – and 14 Canadians in all – awarded a scholarship to the annual educators’ seminar at the Yad Vashem International School for Holocaust Studies in Jerusalem.

The intensive 19-day program saw educators from around the world meet face to face with Holocaust survivors, take field trips and learn about topics ranging from the history of anti-Semitism to Holocaust films.

“The seminar was an unbelievable experience,” Daniel said.

The Buckingham Elementary Grade 5/6 teacher has been teaching the Holocaust to his students for about five years.

“I didn’t plan to teach about the Holocaust,” he said, “but at some point I felt that it was part of my identity and I wanted kids to learn about, not just the Holocaust, but genocide in general.”

It’s a subject that requires a lot sensitivity to teach, he said, a point that was stressed at the seminar in Israel.

“You have to treat it very gently,” said Daniel, who has been teaching in the Burnaby district since 2007. “You need to know what to choose, what images not to show, all the things that you’re telling them, all the things you’re not telling them.”

His Holocaust unit, which includes information about the genocide, a novel study, creative writing and an art project, sometimes moves his students to tears, but he hasn’t gotten any complaints from parents about kids being traumatized by the information, he said.

The topic may be “out of the box,” according to Daniel, but he said it includes important lessons for his students.

“I think there should be more of an understanding and recognition to the topic as an introduction to basically how people in the world still don’t understand each other, still hate each other, are still trying to kill each other,” he said.

He said he and the two other area teachers who travelled to Israel – Surrey’s Mark Figueira and Delta’s Stephanie Henderson – would like to put together a slide-show resource for high school and elementary teachers teaching the topic.

“My goal is actually to be able to teach teachers in the district, high school and elementary teachers, about the Holocaust and how to approach the topic,” he said.

For more info about seminars for educators in English at Israel’s Yad Vashem International School for Holocaust Studies, visit www.yadvashem.org.

cnaylor@burnabynow.com

@CorNaylor

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